Ghosts of Rosewood Asylum

by Stephen Prosapio

  He flicked his cell open. “Hello.”

  “Za-ach, it’s your da-ad.” Despite being a simple tradesman, the way his father pronounced Zach’s name sounded like a disappointed English actor performing Shakespeare.

  “I know who it is, Dad. Have you ever heard of caller ID?”

  “Ah,” he said, “I don’t believe in that stuff.”

  “The 1970s called, they want your rotary phone back.”

  “Uh huh. Okay. So did I wake you up?”

  “No, I’ve been up for a while. I’m working on a case.”

  “Oh.” Dad sounded confused. Zach knew his father loved him, but he wasn’t sure his dad understood anything he’d shared with him about his TV show. Dad wasn’t at all interested in the paranormal. “So, did you talk to Ray about the deck?”

  “Yes, Daddy Dearest. We’ll be out there this weekend for sure.”

  “Okay. Because you know these little buggers are—”

  “I know. I know,” Zach said, even though he had no idea what his father was about to say.

  “Okay. So do you have a few minutes to talk?” Dad asked.

  Zach’s dad relished long phone conversations the way the pope approved of fornication. Not at all.

  “I’m working a case, Dad. Is there something you need to talk about?”

  “Oh, yeah, that’s right,” he said with a sigh. “Well hey, I figured I should let you know before you got here that…well, I had to take your mom’s rose trellises down.”

  “You did?”

  “Yeah, they were completely infested and the termite guy said that the queen and the colony are probably out there in the garden. Whatever that means.”

  Gary Kalusky was neither a vengeful man, nor one who believed in symbolic gestures. If he had removed his dead wife’s rose trellises, it had been for practical reasons. Zach was glad though that his dad had given him a chance to mentally prepare—to anticipate seeing the remnants of his mother’s favorite pastime demolished.

  “Okay, thanks for letting me know.” Zach had arrived at the command center in the lobby and needed to speak with Angel. “Hey, I’ve got to get something taken care of. I’ll call you tomorrow to confirm everything.”

  “Okay, all right. b-bye.”

  “Love you, bye.”

  “Your boyfriend?” Angel snickered.

  “Funny.” Zach knew what he needed to do, but the phone call had thrown him off kilter. “Angel, what was the Tech Schedule for last night?”

  Angel became serious. “Is there a problem, boss?”

  “Don’t give me that. I asked you a question. I put you in charge and I need to know who was working here when.”

  Angel saluted and then chuckled, but his casual demeanor seemed false—forced. “Matthew worked the first shift. Pierre was scheduled to take over after ‘Spirit Hour’ or whatever you guys called it last night. I was to relieve him around 6 AM.”

  “And that’s how things shook out?”

  “Pretty much, si.” Angel was one of the worst liars in the world. He not only couldn’t hide his nervousness, he perspired rapidly when stretching the truth.

  “Good,” Zach said. “That’s what I thought.”

  “Is there a problem?”

  “Nothing that I can’t handle.”

  Zach exited Rosewood. The fresh air helped clear his head. Rebecca’s comment the previous day about something evil roaming the halls had stuck with him. Zach wasn’t sure about an evil presence, but there was something about Rosewood. Something beyond the stale air and dusty floors that didn’t quite sit right. Long periods of time spent inside the asylum made him feel out of focus, not centered, watched. The feeling of being observed, of constantly being evaluated was, perhaps the most uncomfortable, and he couldn’t seem to shake it.

  Not while he was inside Rosewood.

  Zach flipped open his cell phone and called Wendy.

  “Just a sec,” she said. Her hushed tone indicated she was in a library or somewhere she couldn’t talk.

  Echoed sounds came through the earpiece, indicating that Wendy had reached an outer hallway of some kind.

  “Hey, before I forget,” Zach said, “Could you research a name for me today?”

  Even over the phone line, Wendy’s sigh conveyed frustration that bordered on contempt. He usually used the proverbial stick with Wendy, but occasionally the use of a carrot was in order.

  “Please?” Zach made his voice as sweet as he could. “This lead has the potential to blow the case wide open…”

  “What is it?”

  “Find out everything you can about a John Paramour. Date of birth, April 14, 1865.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Yes. And yes I know why that date is significant.”

  Her end of the line was silent a moment, but he could almost hear her mind racing. “That name seems familiar,” she said finally. “I can’t put my finger on where I know it from though. She sighed again, but it contained less angst. Then, she grunted. “Okay, I’ll find out who he was.”

  “Thank you, Wendybird. Hey, Patrizia told me you had something to tell me?” he asked.

  “Yes. Remember in my opening pitch how I mentioned that suicides had increased at Rosewood?”

  “Sure.”

  “Well, I hadn’t known the extent of it. Apparently, between July of 1899 and Rosewood’s closure in 1903, there were thirty seven of them.”

  It sounded like a lot, but Zach didn’t have anything to compare that number to. “Do you have the number prior to—”

  “Of course I do. Between 1892, when it opened, and July of 1899—a span twice that of the other timeframe, there were only eleven suicides. Zach, that’s like a six hundred percent increase.”

  “Hey Zach, can I talk to you a minute?” Shelly asked. She approached him from the area where the tents had been set up.

  “Yeah, sure. What’s up?”

  Her furrowed brow and frown told Zach that she was upset with something. Oh no, he thought, here it comes. Due to the inclusion of the Demon Hunters, Shelly, his most trusted investigator, had been pushed into the background of this case. He’d paired her with Patrizia, the least-experienced partner possible, and he expected she was upset about it.

  “I found something,” she said. “I found something very…odd.”

  “What? Where?”

  “In the administration building. It would be easier to show you. C’mon.” She turned back in that direction.

  They trekked across the weed-strewn lawn to the far southeastern end of the property. Zach should have known better than to doubt Shelly’s team-first attitude. She was a terrific investigator—able to intuitively know where to focus her efforts.

  “I’ll be honest,” she said, as they approached the outskirt building, “it looks like someone might be trying to falsify evidence.”

  Might be, Zach thought. Shelly didn’t know the half of it. “Show me,” he said.

  She led him into the building and through to one of the small rooms that used to be an office. The prior night, all the teams had experienced dramatic EMF fluctuations in the room. Shelly stood in the center, not pointing anything out. “I think it’s more obvious now,” she said. “I may have slightly discolored it while investigating it. Or maybe it just seems more visible because I know it’s there.”

  Vacant and dusty, Zach didn’t notice anything unusual. The walls were eggshell. Perhaps they had once been white and yellowed over the years, but Zach suspected based on the continuity of color that they’d always been—he saw it. In the far corner of the room, just above the baseboard, a square the size of a cocktail napkin was slightly discolored from the rest of the wall. Zach approached it and knelt down.

  “Yep, you found it.” Shelly stood behind him.

  “What is it?” Zach lightly tapped the area with his finger. “It’s sticky.”

  “Yes. Something was taped up there and recently too, otherwise the adhesive would have attracted more dust.”

  Zach
peered closer. All around the outside of the cubed area in question, tiny brush strokes blended with the wall’s color. It even appeared that a darker layer had been applied over it to appear dirty. “Someone painted whatever it was to match the wall so that it wouldn’t be detected.”

  “Look closely at the wall,” Shelly said. “In the center of where the patch was, there’s an imprint.”

  She was right. Something the size of a matchbook had been pressed into the wall and had left behind very small scratches.

  “It was probably something metal.” Zach touched it with his fingertip. That spot wasn’t sticky. “A transponder of some sorts? A bug?”

  “With all the crazy EMF activity in here last night, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was something designed specifically to give us false readings.” Shelly held up her EMF meter and pointed it throughout the room. I’ve gotten no spikes at all since we’ve been here. Last night this room was nuts with EMF fluctuations.”

  “I need you to keep completely quiet about this, Shelly. Can you do that for me?”

  She nodded.

  “Seriously,” Zach said, “No one can know.”

  “Okay. But do you know who’s responsible?”

  Zach didn’t know for certain, but he was getting a pretty good idea.

  As Zach approached the asylum, Matthew stood outside on the Rosewood driveway. It was quickly approaching noon, but the overcast wasn’t showing signs of dissipating. A cold wind from the north had kept it below sixty degrees all morning, and they’d be lucky to keep the temperatures in the fifties until nightfall. The air contained the autumn scent of decaying leaves.

  “Glorious day, huh boss?” Matthew said.

  “I need to speak with you,” Zach said, softly.

  Matthew’s grin disappeared. “What’s up?”

  Zach glanced back at the asylum and ventured down the drive toward Rosewood’s main gate. Matthew obviously knew to trail along. Once they were safely out of earshot, Zach spoke.

  “There’s no easy way to say this. Angel has betrayed us.”

  Matthew almost stumbled. “What? Oh my God.”

  “I know,” Zach said. “It came as a shock to me, too.”

  “What do we do? I mean, what has he done?”

  Zach’s nose tingled from the cold, but he refused to rub it. “I need you to keep an eye on him. I need you to tell me if you see or have seen anything suspicious.”

  Matthew adjusted the brim of his baseball cap. “Okay. I will. I’m not sure I know what to look for though.”

  “Keep on the lookout of anything suspicious with the Demon Hunters. Pierre, Bryce, even Rico.”

  “Sure. Did they find something suspicious with the video review?”

  “No. Not exactly,” Zach lied. “I know he’s hiding something from me, lying to me.”

  “Okay, so there is something you should know.” Matthew rubbed his chin. “But you have to promise not to let on that I told you.”

  Zach knew in circumstances like this it was wiser to say nothing. He nodded.

  “Pierre drank too much last night and passed out. When I went to wake him for his shift, he was just flat out. So I worked a bit longer. Maybe another hour or so and then was ready to pass out myself.”

  “That’s late. You musta been wiped. What time was it?”

  “I didn’t look at my watch, but I think it was about 4:30. I figured that Angel had already gotten some sleep. Why not let him take over? I figured he would wake Pierre when he needed to.”

  “Angel’s the lead. You should have woken him up as soon as you couldn’t wake Pierre.”

  “I know, but I didn’t want anyone to get in trouble, and I was still pretty amped from Spirit Hour.”

  “That’s understandable,” Zach said. “So what happened with Angel and Pierre this morning?”

  “I dunno. I just know when I woke up, Angel was still on duty…I suppose he could have gotten Pierre up at some point, but I doubt it based on how Pierre looked this morning.”

  “Agreed. Matthew, I need you to keep this strictly between you and me. I’ll let you know the next move and I wouldn’t be surprised that if this time next week, you’re the Tech Lead of XPI.”

  Matthew’s face brightened and he grinned. “Yes, sir! Although, I mean, it would come under rather awkward circumstances.”

  “You let me worry about that.”

  As though Zach didn’t already have enough to worry about, he began feeling massive pangs of guilt. During the course of that conversation, he had not been entirely truthful.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  “Bless me father, for I have sinned,” Zach said, once the confessional’s partition opened. “It’s been three days since my last confession.”

  “Zachary?”

  “Yes, Father.”

  “Why are you in here, boy?”

  “There are still a few people waiting. I figured I’d take care of business the old fashioned way and then we could talk face-to-face after you’re done working.”

  “I’m never done working, son.” Monsignor Macginty chuckled. “Go ahead with your confession.”

  Zach admitted to having had angry thoughts about people throughout the week, especially Bryce Finman. He shared minor infractions such as laziness for not having attended an early morning class, to showing subtle disrespect to Mr. Winkler and others. Lastly, he confessed to telling a major lie to a member of his team.

  “And why’d you do that, son?”

  “It was about someone else on the show—a well-intentioned type of ruse. It’s kind of hard to explain—it may all be a bit too self serving.”

  “Who was this canard about now, Zachary?”

  “My Technical Lead, Angel.”

  Behind the partition, Macginty sighed. “So you lied about an Angel, son?”

  Zach hadn’t really thought about it that way. Pondering it on his knees in the dark, he realized it was pretty damn ironic.

  “Yes, Father. At least I think so. It’s a rather complicated situation, actually.”

  “I see.” Macginty’s calm voice seemed neither detached nor judgmental. “Okay son, I want ya’ta say six ‘Hail Marys’ and one ‘Our Father’ out there.”

  “Yes, Father.”

  “And Zach…you’re going’ta have ‘ta make things right with this Angel fella. You’re going’ta need to be honest with him.”

  “I understand, Father.”

  “And Zach? Would ‘ya please stop callin’ me ‘Father?’ I’m a Monsignor. I work for a living.”

  It was one of their running jokes.

  “Of course, Father.”

  Macginty mumbled a series of sacramental words that ended in “go and sin no more,” and closed the partition. Zach exited the confessional, knelt in a pew near the statue of the Virgin Mary and said his prayers.

  For Zach, absolution was Catholicism’s single coolest feature. Provided he completed his penance as instructed by the priest, the sin was no more. It wasn’t like an erasure in a ledger; it was as if the mistake had never taken place. Still, setting things right with Angel was likely going to be awkward, and Zach still wasn’t one-hundred percent sure his suspicions were correct.

  After reciting half a dozen Hail Marys, Zach was breezing most of the way through the Lord’s Prayer when the ambient smell of candles was replaced by the scent of cheap deodorant and even cheaper aftershave. Macginty had sidled up on Zach’s left.

  Zach completed the prayer aloud. “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”

  “For Thine is the Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory ferever’n ever,” Macginty added, pulling Zach into a bear hug.

  Approaching seventy-years old, Macginty kept his white hair in a short crew cut. He had not, as long as his photographs were to be trusted, lost an ounce of muscle since he was in his thirties. He’d been an army chaplain in Vietnam. Prior to that, as long as a priest’s word was to be trusted, he’d been a local boxing celebrity of sorts—in the early 1960s he’d los
t the bout, but had gone the distance with Sugar Ray Robinson. Macginty claimed the judges “robbed” him of the victory, but if they had not, he might have gone onto a professional fighting career and missed his calling as a priest. It had been Monsignor Macginty who first encouraged one young Ray Ross to put on gloves and climb into the ring. When Ray threatened to take on the nickname, “Sugar Ray,” Macginty had anointed him “The Railroad.” And that was that.

  “Can I trouble you to make me some holy water, Father?” Zach asked, holding up a couple of already full water bottles.

  “I told ‘ya. Holy water is holy water, is holy water. Help yourself whenever you need’ta, son.”

  “I know, father, but it’s hard to get it out of baptismal and besides, I think it works better when you bless it specifically for me.”

  “Aren’t you a charmer?” Macginty said. “C’mon. Let’s us go up’ta the altar.”

  From the elevated position, Saint Francis of Assisi brought back a slew of memories for Zach. He’d been an altar boy for a number of years, which had afforded him an excuse to spend an inordinate amount of time with Macginty. It was in the sacristy of this church that Zach had finally gained control of his special talent.

  Macginty stood at the altar, passed his hand over the water bottles and blessed them.

  “I don’t like this particular case yer workin’ on, son.”

  “But I haven’t told you anything about it.”

  “I know. Imagine how I’d feel about it if ‘ya did?” Macginty handed him the water bottles. “You know I don’t like lies, Zachary, and if yer speakin’ untruths, then that means others must be doin’ the same.”

  It wasn’t anywhere near as dramatic as Sashza’s proclamation on the quad, but it was just as spot-on accurate.

  “The case is baffling, Father. There are so many divergent puzzle pieces, and I don’t know who I can trust.”

  “Ya trust yourself well enough though don’tcha, son?”

  Zach shrugged. “I’m thinking of inducing an episode tonight. I need to understand what’s going on there.”

  Monsignor Macginty crossed his arms across his broad chest. He never scolded Zach for using his powers to solve paranormal cases, but just like a concerned parent, he usually expressed reservations. He had helped Zach gain control over his affliction, but it had taken Zach years to tell the priest about the voice, the visions and the spirit living inside him. Upon finding out, Macginty suggested excising it. Zach protested that his godfather’s spirit helped him with his affliction. The monsignor cajoled, debated and lectured, but he never threatened or judged. And Macginty had always made it clear that he’d never given up hope of such an outcome.