Contents
Prologue
Welcome to Westmore Memorial Hospital, Jamie...
Doctor Who?
Jamie Can You See Us?
Call in the Shrinks
Help Me Obi-Wan...I Mean Bert...You're My Only Hope
Thank God for Google...
Dr. Malone Makes Rounds...Again
Home Free
Early Bird Notification List
Books By Riley Amitrani
Copyright Notice
“Gonna die in this small town
And that's probably where they'll bury me”
>John Mellencamp & Kenny Chesney, from “Small Town”, 1985
Prologue
Westmore, NH
November, 1956
The small town of Westmore, New Hampshire, just at the northern end of Lake Willoughby, bordering the Willoughby State Forest was unremarkable. It’s location, just half an hour or so from the Canadian border, did not make Westmore a locale for most New Englanders, even those desiring to distance themselves from the hustle and bustle of major cities, a prime choice. For decades it was the home to particularly hardy souls who could endure the long, harsh winters for the reward of memorable, but very short summers. Like most small villages, it had just a smattering of businesses. There was a local post office, a hardware store, a couple small cafes, and a general store. The general store was adequate for items of necessity or emergency, but for the small population, they had to drive quite a distance to reach a major town for groceries or anything else of substance.
For outsiders, it might be looked on as a major inconvenience, but the residents of Westmore just seemed to take it in stride, relishing their isolation and self-reliance to live there. In the late 1940’s, a project was launched to construct the East Brownington School, located in the town of the same name. It was primarily put up in response to the boom of births following World War II, as people from Westmore and the surrounding towns realized a need for a more substantial local school was needed. At the same time, the leaders in Westmore, not official mind you, but those who took a leadership role out of necessity, lobbied for some sort of accompanying medical facility to accommodate what they foresaw as an answer to the possible rise in families.
They joined with the other communities in the county, and funds were appropriated from the state to construct the Orleans County Regional Hospital. Due to space availability and land costs, Westmore was chosen as the site for the new facility. The hospital was a huge success, with everyone from miles around praising the idea and the care they could now receive without having to travel miles in case of a severe medical emergency. As the hospital grew and matured, it attracted a number of medical professionals that found Westmore much more to their liking than other more populous cities. Of all the new physicians and supporting staff that slowly trickled in to the new hospital, the most notable was that of Dr. Frederick Malone.
Malone had been practicing in southern New England for just a few years, but his reputation and skill and diagnostic intuition had made him well-known from Connecticut to Maine. The administrators of the county hospital were pleasantly shocked when Dr. Malone contacted them for a position they were looking to fill as the hospital grew. The doctor could have most likely have had his pick of most any hospital in New England, or elsewhere for that matter, but upon interviewing him, they were soon convinced of his insistence that he was looking for just what they had available. Dr. Malone came on board and was soon taken into the fold of Westmore as if he had always been there. Indeed, it was impossible to find one of his patients or family members thereof that did not praise the man to the heavens.
The East Brownington School as well flourished and expanded along with the hospital, the students there often making up the majority of Dr. Malone’s patient base. Ordinarily, word of a situation as this would have brought in more and more people looking to escape all the downsides of large cities, but for whatever reasons, Westmore remained a well-kept secret. And the residents were thrilled. The last thing they wanted was for their beloved home to get overrun with outsiders. For a few years, this idyllic and peaceful scenario went on. Even the turmoil of the 1960’s that seemed to be engulfing the country was just another news story for Westmore. It certainly looked disruptive and stressful on the evening news, but fortunately it seemed to not be touching them. The new decade, though, had its own particular brand of a black, dark secret in store for Westmore.
At the Orleans County Regional Hospital, a string of unexplained and mysterious deaths began to crop up. At first it was just a single patient, and even though the man was young and in seemingly good health, no one gave it much thought. These things just happened from their perspective. And after all, they had the gifted Dr. Malone there to make sense of anything like this that arose. But as the months went by, the body count rose. In all cases, the patients who died had no indication of any current or previous serious conditions that would have indicated their sudden mortality. As the fifth death became public knowledge, the residents of the county demanded some answers. Just because the village of Westmore was well-removed from the furor of what was going on elsewhere in the country at the time, this did not mean rumors and conspiracy theories did not abound.
In Westmore and surrounding towns, the news of the Cold War with the former Soviet Union was hard to avoid and ignore. And like a lot of other Americans, the residents soon had themselves worked up into a frenzy, sure that some clandestine, evil plot from Moscow was afoot poisoning them slowly, one-by-one. As the paranoia grew, the administrators of the hospital thought it prudent to have Dr. Malone speak in a local public forum to squash all the innuendo and speculation. They were sure if he could assure them that the deaths were from just natural disease states, the heightened fear in town would disappear. Dr. Malone, while caught off-guard and taken by surprise by the request, agreed to speak to the locals. A meeting was arranged at the town hall in Brownington and by the time they adjourned, the residents of the county seemed convinced that they were not the target of some Communist attack.
Dr. Malone accepted the many thanks from his new neighbors as well as the accolades from the hospital administrators. But as he drove home that night, he knew things would never be the same. Malone had this compulsion. That was what he had always called it, anyway. One that no one knew about but himself. One that had been the driving force for his departure from his former position in southern New England. Malone did not understand where the impulses came from or how to control them. He had assumed that the stress of a busy and demanding practice in the south had brought them out, but even here in the small environs of Westmore, they had emerged again.
Malone had considered getting some therapy to deal with this situation, but at the time, in his opinion, psychotherapy was at best worthless and at worst, damaging due to the therapies and techniques in vogue in that day. However, this was not what really kept the doctor from considering any help. When he was alone and had his thoughts all to himself, and was completely honest with himself, he had to admit he liked the compulsion. It was as much a part of his makeup as an arm or a leg. To remove the compulsion would be to no longer be the whole person he was…no matter how insidious it was. So, with this in mind, Dr. Malone went about his daily routines, tamping down the voices and the impulses. It would not, he told himself, do to continue on this path until the anxiety and apprehension in the area from the recent spate of deaths went away.
With great effort and concentration, Malone kept his demons at bay and life in Westmore fell back into the same peaceful and serene state it had been fo
r many years. But as time went by, and Dr. Malone began to lose his grip on controlling his inner beast, this was short-lived. Another of the sudden and unexpected deaths, almost identical in nature and description to the previous five happened. People in the area were no longer focused on the Soviet menace as the causative factor, rather wondering what exactly was going on inside the Orleans County Regional Hospital. When the administrators could no longer control the public outcry for answers, they succumbed to the pressure and launched an investigation, mostly to quell the constant demand for an explanation.
At first, the investigation was launched just to placate the populace. None of the board members ever expected the internal inquiry to uncover anything. However, the longer they ran the investigation and the closer they looked into what had happened, the more suspicious the situation appeared. An initial red flag that arose was that the six deaths had occurred while the patients were under the direct care of Dr. Malone. On the surface alone, that was not overly circumspect, as the vast majority of the hospital’s patients had Malone as their attending physician. However, the young age and general good health of all of them, combined with having been seen by Dr. Malone seemed curious.
It seemed the doctor’s experience and expertise would not align with what had happened, so the board called for a formal inquiry with Malone to get some answers they could take to the public. They were on the verge of public relations nightmare, and they needed to resolve this as soon as possible. When the chief administrator contacted Malone to inform him of their intentions, Malone knew it was all over. He readily agreed to meet with the board members the following morning, but he knew as well as anyone, that the truth would immediately come out. There was no way, even with his expertise and background that he could explain away or cover up this thing any longer.
The conference room at the hospital was packed the following morning as the administrative staff waited anxiously for the arrival of their chief of hospital operations. As time dragged on and Malone had not appeared, they sent one of the board members to his office to retrieve him. This tardiness was well out of the doctor’s character, and they were sure some unforeseen emergency had arisen or perhaps the good doctor had taken ill. In just a few minutes, the man walked back to conference room on uneasy legs, holding a folder of papers in his hands. He looked up, pale and ashen as if he had fallen ill himself or had seen something awful.
“What is it, John?” the head of administration asked, “Did you find Dr. Malone?”
The man looked up, appearing as if he might be sick, and just nodded weakly as he held out the paper.
“I did, sir…” he replied in a shaky voice.
“Well?”
“I think you had better read that and then come with me…”
The papers were passed from member to member, and soon each had taken on the pasty and pale complexion of their colleague. One by one they arose and followed the man down the long hallway as he stepped aside to let them peer into Malone’s large office just off the corridor before it branched to the clinical exam rooms. Hanging from the strong support beam that ran over the center of the office was the inert corpse of Dr. Frederick Malone. A few board members gasped at the sight and Mrs. Yarrow fainted. James Harrigan, the chief administrator had John call the police as they filed back down the hallway to the conference room after Mary Yarrow had been revived.
The papers that John had retrieved from Malone’s office had not indicated his suicide, only an explanation for what he had done. Malone had taken full responsibility for the six deaths, explaining in some detail as to the inner compulsion he could no longer control. It had been with him since childhood, apparently, and while he could control it for short periods of time, it had become impossible for him to keep it at bay in the long term. The board sat in stunned silence as they waited for the police, all wondering how none of them could have seen this While Malone had taken responsibility for the deaths, there was no indication anywhere in any of the documents of an apology or any semblance of remorse.
Years went by, and the memory of the Frederick Malone incident faded from Westmore, but it never fully vanished. It was still the tale that the older kids told the younger ones at Halloween for a good scare. In deference to the families of the victims of Dr. Malone, the old Orleans County Regional Hospital was demolished and a new facility, renamed the Westmore Memorial Hospital was rebuilt. It memorialized the six victims. However, what was not made public knowledge in the aftermath was that even in the new facility, Dr. Frederick Malone seemed to still be in residence. Late at night, or when there were few people around, nurses and other personnel reported having heard odd sounds…or seen things move on their own.
It was not a well-accepted belief, but those who had vivid memories of the horrors of the original hospital knew that Dr. Frederick Malone roamed the corridors and clinics of the new Westmore Memorial Hospital. The splinter rumors among the older residents of Westmore were that Malone haunted the place, still looking to claim the lives of unsuspecting patients. According to these believers, Malone was still plagued by his compulsion…even after death…
Welcome to Westmore Memorial Hospital, Jamie…
Brownington College/ Westmore Memorial Hospital
Westmore, NH
April 20, 2017
12 PM
The East Brownington School of the 1950’s, like much of the area, had undergone a transformation. The former regional school had long ago been razed as the surrounding towns evolved far beyond what had once been and treasured by the locals. Westmore and its neighbors had expanded along with the rest of the country, and the proximity to Canada and the harsh winter climate no longer seemed an impediment to new arrivals. The former regional school was now Brownington College, a private school, not well known outside of New Hampshire. Jamie Ramirez was one of the typical students who had moved from private prep schools throughout New England to the private college. Though she did not see herself as particularly privileged, Jamie was in fact just that when compared to the general population of kids her age at Brownington.
Despite her upbringing and all the perks, she had been blessed with growing up, Jamie was one of those kids who never flaunted her background. She never talked about it and to be around her, you never would have known about it. Jamie fit in well with everyone around her and as far as anyone but her very close friends knew, she was just one of the crowd trying to get a college degree. In her freshman year, Jamie had met Bert Edwards who was a senior. True to form, Bert had no idea about Jamie until they were a serious couple. He was taken aback, in fact, when he found out, having assumed what most people around Jamie had. Once they found each other, it was rare to have seen Jamie and Bert apart. Fortunately, Bert was able to secure an internship at a local consulting firm in nearby Barton that allowed them to still see each other daily while Jamie continued on at Brownington.
In fact, Jamie was what had brought Bert back to the Brownington campus that day. A Saturday to be exact. One of the specific things that helped bond Jamie to her fellow classmates was athletics. She was one of those anomalies in life, the natural athlete, that most men would have given up a testicle to be. Not a woman, if that is what you supposed, but that one in a million of people that has a wide range of natural, world-class athletic ability, without ever really working at it. Not that Jamie did not train and work to hone her gifts…far from it. But the innate skills and abilities…those she was simply born with. It was in fact what had caught Bert’s eye when he had dropped by casually one afternoon the year before to watch the women’s soccer team host a tournament.
Jamie had been participating in a variety of sports since just a young girl back in Manchester, but soccer was her real and deepest love. That avocation had stuck with her through her adolescence and now she was a standout on the Brownington team. Bert sat about midway up in the bleachers as the sun warmed his shoulders, a pleasant reversal from how the weather the previous two weeks had been. Jamie had spied Bert as he arrived and winke
d at him from the sidelines of the pitch. He waved back casually and sat back to enjoy watching Jamie do her thing. The first half was still a deadlock with neither team having scored, though there had been several opportunities on each side. However, after a bad pass, Jamie streaked from her midfield slot and intercepted the ball and began to race for the goal. Bert stood with the crowd as Jamie neared the net and prepared to take a shot.
The goalie, though, perhaps sensing the situation, or perhaps knowing of Jamie by reputation seemed to feel an aggressive move might be called for, rather than trying to block a kick from the speeding Jamie. The girl left her net unguarded and came at Jamie full bore. She slid, trying to chip the ball away, but mistimed her slide and caught Jamie high on the ankle. Jamie fell in a heap, immediately reaching for her leg and crying out in pain. The goalie, without hesitation, ran to Jamie’s slumped body and began gesturing wildly toward the Brownington bench for help. Bert dashed from the stands to try and get to her, but he was collared by the coach as soon as he reached the sideline, telling him to let the medical staff take care of it.
Bert waited impatiently as Jamie was stretchered off the field while an ambulance could be heard approaching in the distance. Bert finally wormed his way in to hold her hand.
“First breakaway of the season, and I blew it….” Jamie whispered up at Bert, as she smiled through her pain.
“Just relax, Jamie….” he replied.
Bert knew her well enough to know this was her typical reaction to getting hurt: jokes. And though he was no EMT or a doctor of any ilk, he was pretty sure this was not just some simple twist or sprain. The paramedics loaded Jamie into the ambulance and began to close the doors as Bert approached.
“Sorry, dude….” the one EMT said, “this ain’t a taxi.”
The Haunting of Westmore Hospital - Behold the Doctor of Death Page 1
