The Tenth Ward

by Rockwell Scott

  Rachel had been the unintended recipient of everything that had happened so far. Rand only had one goal for the night, and that was to make Rachel comfortable, to put her mind at ease and settle her frazzled nerves from all the stories about Georgia Collins.

  Regardless, he knew the girl and her family would remain at the forefront of his thoughts.

  During the first scene in the movie, Rand’s phone buzzed.

  “Who is that?” Rachel asked.

  “Libby. She’s hanging out with Georgia tonight.”

  Rachel frowned. He shouldn’t have brought it up. “Is everything okay?” she asked, even though Rand knew she didn’t really want to know.

  Rand did not reply. He laid his phone face down and leaned back on the couch with Rachel as they watched the movie. She cuddled into him, burying her face into his chest. He put his arm around her shoulders, holding her tight, but after watching for a few more minutes, Rand looked down at her and noticed that her eyes were not on the screen.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” Rachel said, sighing. “I have to pee.” She got off the couch and disappeared into the back hallway.

  The movie would not make her feel better. It wasn’t enough of a distraction from everything that had been going on.

  He lifted the remote and paused the movie. The only sound in the living room was the wind outside and the coming storm.

  Then three loud knocks on the door.

  Rand sat up straight, suddenly alert, an anxious feeling clenching inside his stomach. He stood and crept to his bag, which rested against the far wall, and pulled out a wooden crucifix, the one he brought with him to every investigation.

  He held it out toward the door, staring it down, waiting to see if whatever was on the other side knocked again. He gripped the doorknob and flung it open.

  There was nobody there.

  He stuck his head out. The front yard was shrouded in the dark night, the sky marred by rolling, grey storm clouds.

  His palms grew clammy. These occurrences were very familiar to him.

  Rand went back inside, then closed the door and locked it. The only light in the room came from the luminescent television screen, the movie paused in a single frame.

  Suddenly, Rand got the impression he was not alone in the house. Not because of Rachel in the bathroom. No, someone or something was with him in the living room. He felt eyes on him.

  “I command you to leave here,” Rand said, turning in circles, cross still raised, keeping his attention on all corners of the room.

  Loud thumps overhead. As if someone were running along the roof.

  This demon was escalating things faster than usual. It had taken no time at all to follow Rand home.

  This was a standard occurrence. Once Rand stirred up a spirit enough, the entity would always come after him rather than his initial target. That was good. If the demon left Georgia Collins alone for at least a little while, she would get a reprieve.

  Then there was a loud crash at the back of the house, and his heart leapt into his throat.

  Rand rushed down the hall and threw open the door on the right—his office.

  Inside, he found the entire room ransacked.

  His desk was overturned, books had been thrown from the shelves, and pictures had been torn from the walls, the frames smashed on the ground. The window that looked out into the backyard was open, as if a burglar had snuck in.

  Just like the nurse station at the hospital.

  Then Rachel screamed.

  Rand rushed to the bathroom connected to his bedroom. He turned the knob, but the door did not open. He tried to force his way in, but it would not give. Something was holding it closed from the other side.

  “Rachel!” Rand shouted as he banged on the door with his palm.

  “Rand, help me!” she shrieked.

  Rand stood back and kicked the door as hard as he could, cracking the wood and sending it flying open.

  He ran inside just in time to see Rachel levitating in the air before she fell. Before the demon dropped her.

  Rand caught her as best he could, and they both went down together. She wrapped her arms around him, squeezing him tight, her tears rubbing along his cheeks. Her chest heaved as she panted, her face red, her skin covered in slick sweat.

  He clutched her tightly, knowing that he had brought this upon her. The entity was using Rachel to take revenge on him for provoking him.

  “Rand—what was that? What’s going on?”

  Rand stroked her back as he held her. He still gripped the crucifix in his other hand.

  She flinched.

  “What?”

  Rachel pulled the shirt down off her left shoulder, and he gasped at what she saw.

  Three jagged wounds, red and glistening, resembling claw marks. Almost identical to his own scars on his back, an everlasting memento from a demonic foe.

  “Rand, what the hell is this?” When she tried to touch them, she only flinched again, her fingers darting away from the pain as if the marks burned her.

  Rand stared at the scratches, his jaw set, anger rushing through him for the first time.

  Come after me all you want. But leave the others alone.

  However, this was how it always worked. These entities knew him well, and often the best way to get to him was to go after his loved ones. Libby had had a very tumultuous childhood.

  “I don’t want to be here anymore,” Rachel said through her tears.

  “Come on. I’ll take you home.” Rand stood and helped her to her feet. She wobbled, like her knees were made of jelly. Rand remembered how he felt the night he’d first encountered Shindael in the morgue.

  You son of a bitch. As soon as I drop her off, I’m coming for you.

  This demon was strong, and he was fast. There was no lurking and waiting with this one. He had to be removed tonight. There would be no peace until it was done.

  29

  It was eight-thirty in the evening, and the first floor of the hospital, which was usually crowded with patients, visitors, and medical professionals, had grown thin.

  “How have you been?” Libby ventured as they walked. Georgia only shrugged in response. “I see you’ve ramped up the prayers.”

  “I’m not the only person having experiences anymore,” Georgia said. “The nurses are all complaining. He keeps trashing their desk and throwing their charts all around. Someone grabs them and pushes them when they’re walking down the hall at night, but there’s no one there. A nurse named Nica already quit over it.”

  Libby remembered her dad telling her about Nica. He’d seen security footage of her getting tormented by the entity during her night shifts. It didn’t help that Nica had already been a deep believer in the spiritual and supernatural.

  “And now Fiona is on a rampage. I’ve never liked that woman.”

  “She seems kind of mean,” Libby said.

  “Yeah. And she totally believes us when we tell her these stories—I know she does. But it’s all about the hospital image. All about the reputation. All about burying the problems so she doesn’t get in trouble. And now she’s banned your dad from ever coming back.”

  “I wouldn’t worry about it too much,” Libby said, trying to be consoling. “If you can believe it, my dad’s banned from a lot of places.” Georgia chuckled. “He always finds a way in.”

  Just then, Georgia stopped dead in her tracks. She stared straight ahead, her eyes growing wide and her mouth falling open.

  “Georgia?” Libby followed her gaze down the corridor, but saw nothing.

  “Do you see him?” Georgia whispered.

  “Who?”

  Libby looked again, and then she saw.

  A teenaged boy dressed in a hospital gown. He gripped an IV pole next to him, and there was a bag of fluids running from the tube into a cannula in his arm.

  Libby pulled Georgia close. She’d seen apparitions plenty of times in her life, and it was something she’d never
gotten used to. A dark aura exuded from the boy all the way at the other end of the corridor.

  “What do we do?” Georgia whispered.

  Neither of them took their eyes off it as it glared at them. It held impossibly still. A stand off.

  “It’ll leave,” Libby said, hoping that was true. Her mind raced with all the ways her father had taught her to order a spirit to depart.

  “Make him go away. Do something.”

  Command him, Libby thought at last. Give him a command in the name of God and he has to listen.

  The lights in the corridor shut off and the backups came on, leaving them in a shadowy prison. There was no one else around, even though the area they were in was public. It was as if the demon had singled them out.

  And then the boy walked toward them. The only sound was the squeaky wheels of his IV pole, steadily growing louder as he neared.

  Georgia trembled against Libby’s body and they clasped each other’s hands. “Do something,” she whispered again.

  As the boy drew closer, Libby found her voice. “In the name of Jesus Christ, I command you to leave!”

  He only smirked.

  So there was only one thing left Libby could think to do—run.

  “Come on!” She pulled Georgia’s hand and forced her to turn around to run.

  But as soon as they whirled, the boy in the hospital gown was there, a single pace away from them, the same smirk on his face.

  The two girls let out a scream and stumbled backwards.

  The boy spoke to them, but the words were in a language that Libby could not understand. His voice was deep and unnatural, like a recording that had been ruined.

  Libby pulled Georgia’s hand as they ran the other way. This time, the boy did not appear in front of them. But as they fled, his words followed them down the corridor, booming after them. And although Libby could not understand, she also knew she did not want to.

  Libby hoped they would find someone else who could help them. But the place seemed impossibly empty, as if they had been transported to another dimension. Their hands remained clasped together, Georgia’s oxygen cylinder bouncing up and down on its wheels.

  They turned the corner and stopped short. The boy was there, except this time his back faced them. A gaping wound from his head to the top of his buttocks exposed a bloody spinal cord.

  Georgia coughed. A hand went to her chest, her eyes bulged.

  Libby knew they couldn’t keep running away. Georgia’s lungs wouldn’t take it. Maybe that was what the demon wanted. Chase them until she dropped dead.

  “Where’s the chapel?” Libby said.

  “I can’t breathe,” Georgia said between pants.

  In front of them, the boy had turned around and stalked toward them again, the same grin on his darkened face.

  “The chapel,” Libby said, grasping Georgia by both arms. “We’ll be safe in there!”

  Georgia nodded. “This way.”

  They ran away from him again, Georgia mustering her breath as she led the way. They turned another corner, only to find the boy had appeared in front of them again.

  But Georgia ran straight toward him while Libby followed. Libby panicked, hoping that Georgia knew where she was going. Then, Georgia yanked her into a room on the right.

  The chapel was empty and dark. Libby slammed the door closed.

  Surely we are okay in here. They can’t enter holy places. At least, that was what her dad always told her.

  Georgia fell onto her hands and knees, coughing and hacking. Libby crouched beside her, rubbing her back and stroking her hair. “It’s okay. We’re safe in here.” She spotted the large crucifix mounted on the wall behind the altar. On it, Jesus looked up and away, lost in a daze of pain and defeat as he hung from the cross.

  “Shit,” Georgia muttered. She fumbled with the knob on her oxygen tank. The needle on the meter pointed in the red. “I can’t stay in here for long.”

  “But... I saw you get a new one upstairs.”

  “I did! Something’s wrong with it.”

  Libby figured the entity had something to do with that. “I’ll call someone.” She pulled out her phone.

  “Are we really safe?” Georgia whispered.

  “Yes. Demons can’t come inside a holy—”

  The door burst open as if hit by a wrecking ball. Both girls screamed and whirled around. The boy stood at the edge of the threshold into the chapel, his smile gone and replaced by an angry scowl.

  He shouted at them again in the same mysterious language.

  “Help us!” Libby called at the top of her lungs.

  The boy pointed at them. Then, the stained-glass windows on either side of the room shattered all at the same time. The cushions in the pews ripped open by themselves, clouds of cotton drifting into the air, and the mounted Jesus statue unhooked from the wall and fell forward, crashing into the altar, and then to the ground, breaking into pieces. The lights above blew out, raining down shards of glass.

  Amidst the destruction, Libby and Georgia hugged each other and dropped down. Libby threw herself over Georgia as the chapel fell apart around them, trying to shield the girl from any flying debris. She clenched her eyes, doing her best to pray for God’s protection, but the commotion and the demon’s chanting were the only thing that filled her head.

  Only after the room finally fell silent did Libby open her eyes. The chapel was completely trashed. No piece of furniture had been spared. Even the paint on the walls had been marred, covered in sets of three gouges like a giant claw had scratched them.

  The boy was gone.

  Libby helped Georgia to her feet. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

  Georgia looked at her without seeing her, dazed. She stared for several long moments, as if trying to think of what to say. Then she whispered, “It’s over.”

  “What? What’s over?”

  Georgia collapsed into Libby’s arms. The girl was dead weight, and Libby lowered her gingerly to the ground. “Georgia?” Libby gripped her shoulders and shook her. “Georgia, wake up!”

  But she was unresponsive.

  Libby did not know what to do. Start chest compressions? Shake her until she opened her eyes?

  In the end, she ran out of the chapel and into the hallway, screaming for help.

  30

  The rain pelted down on them as they jogged to Rand’s Jeep in the driveway. Once inside, Rand could no longer see the tears on Rachel’s face mixed in with the rainwater.

  As they drove, Rachel said nothing for a long while. The only sounds were the drops pattering on the windshield and the thunder roaring in the distance, farther away now.

  “How do you do it?” she asked.

  “Do what?”

  “Live like this.”

  “It’s not like it happens all the time,” he said, trying to make it sound not as bad. “Just… whenever there is a particularly difficult case.”

  She wiped at her eyes. Her hair was damp and disheveled, her makeup streaked. She even looked like she’d aged a few years. “When you first told me about this, I wasn’t sure what to think. As long as you were helping people, I didn’t care. But…”

  “Now you believe?”

  “How can I not?”

  Rand ground his teeth. “I’m sorry. I never meant for you to get involved.”

  “You weren’t the one who attacked me in the bathroom.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “Rand. What was that thing?”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  “It picked me up and scratched me. It made me feel so bad… Like it wanted me dead.”

  Shindael. Hearing the desperation and sadness in her voice made him despise the demon even more. First Georgia, now Rachel.

  “It’s not something you need to worry about.”

  “Can you get rid of it?”

  His phone vibrated in his pocket. He wondered who would call him so late at night, and then he remembered that Libby was visiting Georgia.
/>   He fished the phone out of his jeans and checked the screen. As he thought, it was Libby. He swiped his thumb to answer.

  “Rand! Watch out!”

  It all happened in a split second. Rand looked up just in time to see a man run out in the middle of the road. He stopped right in front of Rand’s path and held out his arms as if he was trying to catch the oncoming Jeep.

  Rand slammed on the brakes and jerked the steering wheel. The car hydroplaned on the wet road and spun out of control.

  They skidded in circle after circle, the smell of burning rubber filling the car and smoke swallowing the Jeep. Rand’s seatbelt latched hard into place and pinned him to the chair. He squeezed the wheel with both hands, praying they would not flip.

  When they settled, he tried to relax, but his entire body was trembling and his breath came in short gasps.

  “Are you okay?”

  Rachel looked at him in complete terror. Fresh tears were in her eyes. “Did we…”

  Did we hit him?

  Rand threw off his seatbelt and opened the door. He stepped out into the rain, which quickly soaked through his jacket and jeans.

  He jogged back to where the man had leapt out. But there was no sign of him at all.

  He turned and saw Rachel following, arms folded across her body.

  “There’s no one here,” Rand said.

  “That’s impossible,” Rachel said. “He couldn’t have run off that fast.”

  “And because of the way I swerved… I didn’t have time to miss him. He should have been hit.”

  Rachel nodded.

  Then, it occurred to Rand what had happened. “Oh.”

  “What?”

  “He wasn’t real.”

  Rachel eyed him, the rainwater dripping down her face. “Wasn’t real?”

  A loud crash came from the Jeep, startling them both.

  The front driver’s side tire rested on the ground, the Jeep leaning its weight into the wheel-less corner.

  Rand jogged back over and found all five lug nuts unscrewed and scattered in the puddles. “Shit,” he muttered.

  “How the hell did that happen?” Rachel said. But when Rand looked at her, she understood. “You mean that thing can do this kind of stuff too?”