The Abandoned

by Amanda Stevens

  “Did I say something wrong?”

  “No…no. It’s just…one doesn’t hear much about Oak Grove these days.”

  Evidently, he didn’t know about the restoration. “Were there ever any secret ceremonies or rituals conducted in the cemetery?”

  “You mean…occult rituals?” he asked carefully.

  “I’m not really sure. Do you know anything about a secret society called the Order of the Coffin and the Claw?”

  “I’m aware of it,” he said with a frown. “Elitism at its finest. Thankfully, the Order was dissolved several years ago. Of course, there are some who think it merely went underground.”

  “Was it ever affiliated with Oak Grove Cemetery?”

  “Rumor had it, that’s where the initiation rituals were held.” He lowered his voice. “There were whispers of dark ceremonies involving drunken orgies and absinthe trips, all manner of debauchery. From everything I’ve read, something happened in that cemetery. Something dark and unspeakable. That’s why Oak Grove was abandoned.”

  “What do you think happened?”

  “I’m afraid no one who isn’t a Claw will ever know the answer to that question.”

  REE

  Ree slept the sleep of the dead that night. No Ilsa dreams. No sleepwalking episodes. When she woke up, she felt rested and refreshed and after a text message from Hayden, she had a little something to look forward to as she headed off to Emerson. Things were looking up. Maybe it was time to put all the intrigue and weirdness behind her and start focusing on the future again. Now might be a good time to revisit her goals.

  First order of business was research in the library, and Ree was proud of herself for ignoring the lure of the archives. Whatever was to be gleaned about Oak Grove Cemetery and the Tisdales from those dusty old books would have to wait. Her thesis project came first because she’d put way too much time, effort and money into her education to squander it all away now.

  Just when she was starting to think she had a handle on normal again, she ran smack into Detective Devlin on the library steps. He put a hand on her arm to steady her, but Ree shied away.

  “Miss Hutchins, isn’t it?”

  “How do you know my name?” She hadn’t told anyone at police headquarters who she was.

  “I ran your plates yesterday.”

  Of course, he had. “How did you know which car was mine?”

  “I ran them all until I found you.”

  Of course, he had. Ree glanced away, not wanting to look straight into the abyss of his gaze. “How did you know I was here?”

  “A wild guess.”

  Translation: Either he’d followed her from her apartment or someone had tipped him off. And just like that, Ree found herself back in the morass created by that overheard conversation. Maybe she should just tell Detective Devlin the truth. Get it all out in the open. As Hayden pointed out, that might be her best protection. But Ree didn’t trust Devlin. He’d become suspect the moment she’d seen him with Dr. Farrante.

  “You ran off without giving your statement,” he said smoothly.

  Ree refused to be lulled by that silky drawl. “Something came up. I couldn’t wait.”

  “Something more important than a murder investigation?”

  “I told you, I don’t know anything about that murder.”

  “Then tell me what you know about Jared Tisdale.”

  Ree didn’t want to tell him anything, but she was wise enough to realize that she’d better give him something.

  She nodded and shifted her messenger bag to the other shoulder. “I volunteer at the Milton H. Farrante Psychiatric Hospital. Night before last one of the nurses asked me to deliver a package to Dr. Farrante’s office. Just as I got there, I saw a man coming out of Dr. Farrante’s office. It was Tisdale, but I didn’t know that until I saw his picture on the news yesterday morning.”

  “What time was this?”

  “Around nine, I think.”

  “Did he say anything?”

  “No. It was a very brief encounter. He brushed by me on his way out. I spoke with Dr. Farrante for a moment, left the package, and then went back to work. That’s all I can tell you. I don’t know if it’s important, but I thought it might be helpful in establishing a timeline.”

  “That’s very civic-minded of you,” he said. “Did you speak to Dr. Farrante about this?”

  “No. I haven’t been back to the hospital. As soon as I saw the news report, I went straight to the police.”

  “Is there anything else you’d like to tell me?” His gaze narrowed and darkened, his focus so intense, Ree had to glance away.

  She pretended to check her phone. “As I said, it was a very brief encounter. Now if you’ll excuse me…I don’t want to be late to my next class.”

  To Ree’s surprise, he made no attempt to detain her. She ran down the steps and only glanced back when she got to the bottom. Detective Devlin was nowhere in sight.

  Ree had a shift at the hospital that night and for the first time since she’d started working part-time jobs at sixteen, she considered calling in sick. But she was already on Devlin’s radar—Dr. Farrante’s, too, unfortunately—so the best thing to do was continue her usual routine. Act as though nothing had happened. Hopefully, Tisdale’s killer would soon be caught and she could fade back into the woodwork. There was still the secret involving Violet and Ilsa to uncover, but nothing could be done about that without calling too much attention to herself. For now, her curiosity and sense of justice would have to be put on hold.

  The evening went smoothly enough until Trudy summoned her to escort Alice Canton back to her room. Remembering how Alice had reacted to her two nights ago, Ree almost expected the woman to shy away from her. But instead Alice docilely followed her down the corridor, even humming under her breath as though she hadn’t a care in the world. When they got to her door, however, she turned to glance warily over Ree’s shoulder.

  “Where is she?”

  “Where is who?” Ree asked.

  “The girl in the blue dress.”

  Ree’s scalp began to prickle. “I don’t know.”

  “She’ll come back.” Alice warned. Then she leaned in and lowered her voice to a terrified whisper. “They always come back.”

  More than a little spooked, Ree settled Alice in and then hurried back up to the front desk.

  “What’s the matter with you?” Trudy asked. “You look as if you just saw a ghost.”

  “Why does everyone keep saying that?” Ree muttered.

  Trudy didn’t seem to hear her. “I need a favor before you sign out.” She shoved a thick stack of folders across the counter. “Apparently, Dr. Alden’s researching another book. He finished with these files two days ago, but nobody on days can be bothered to return them. They belong in the dungeon. You know where that is, right?”

  Most of the patient records were computerized, but the archived files were stored in a separate wing in a basement-level room dubbed the dungeon. Where that designation had originated, Ree didn’t want to speculate.

  “I don’t have access,” she said.

  Trudy glanced around. “You didn’t get this from me.” She scribbled a number on the back of a note card and handed it to Ree. “Not that it matters. Nobody’s likely to be down there at this hour and the code changes every week. Just leave the files on the counter and skedaddle.”

  The corridors were eerily silent as Ree made her way to the dungeon, but every now and then she could hear the distant wail of a restless mind. As she hurried along on her mission, she began to get the creepy sensation of being followed. Time and again she glanced over her shoulder, but the long hallway behind her was empty. She’ll come back. They always come back.

  Gooseflesh quilled the hair at her nape. Ignoring a draft that could only be coming from the air-conditioning vents, Ree tapped in the code and entered the dungeon. The chill followed her in.

  She gave herself a pep talk as she reached for the light switch. A moment later, the
fluorescent bulbs flickered on, casting a harsh glow over the room. The area was large and well-organized, very different from the archives at Emerson. Above the long rows of metal storage cabinets, she could see darkness through the bars installed over the narrow windows.

  Her sneakers made barely a sound as she moved along the tile floor. She placed the folders on the counter and started to turn. Something caught her attention, a sound that might have been a whisper.

  Ree forced a laugh. Keep it together, girl. There’s nothing down here but a bunch of ancient files. Decades of recorded misery.

  Then, whether it was a hallucination or another figment of her imagination, Ree couldn’t say, but suddenly she had a very clear vision of being in that room. An image formed in her mind…a young woman strapped to a gurney with electrodes attached to a metal apparatus fastened around her head.

  Where is my baby? What have you done to her? Please don’t hurt her! Please don’t do this to her!

  On and on the woman babbled until a long needle was inserted beneath one of her eyelids. And then her screams became incessant.

  Ree clutched her head, trying to quell the disturbing tableau. It was an image from a movie, no doubt. Something that had been tucked away for years in the far recesses of her mind.

  Again, she turned to leave, but something suddenly occurred to her. There was a very good chance that some of Violet Tisdale’s early records were stored down here. Confidentiality in the mental health care profession was sacrosanct so rummaging through patient files wasn’t something Ree took lightly. But this was an opportunity that might not come again.

  A cursory examination revealed the files were sorted by decade. Ree had no idea when Miss Violet had first been committed. The only specific date she knew was Ilsa’s tenth birthday—June 3, 1915. Professor Meakin said she’d run off to Europe when she was seventeen, which would have been sometime in 1922. Assuming Violet had been born at a later date, the most logical place to start a search was the year of Ilsa’s disappearance. Then Ree would work her way forward until and if she found something.

  As it turned out, she needed to search no further than 1922. Everything she wanted to know was in a file labeled Ilsa Tisdale.

  Ilsa had also been a patient at the hospital.

  It took Ree a moment to absorb the significance of that revelation. At the age of seventeen, Ilsa had been committed by her father, James, and by her doctor, Milton Farrante. And she had remained confined until her death seven years later.

  Ree read through the file, so engrossed in Ilsa’s tragic history that the swish of the door barely registered. She had no idea anyone was about until she felt an icy touch at the back of her neck. A warning…

  A split second later, the lights sputtered off. Ree slanted her head, listening. She heard nothing at first and then a few feet away came an infinitesimal shuffle. Stealthy and determined, someone was closing in on her.

  Ree waited for a moment longer, then slipped to the end of the row and flattened herself against the metal cabinet. She could discern footfalls now and turned her head toward the sound, trying to mentally chart his course. The outside security lights filtered in through the high windows, and as her eyes adjusted, Ree could see well enough. She glanced around the edge of the cabinet and saw a movement at the opposite end of the long row.

  Jerking back, she held her breath. Maybe she was overreacting. Maybe it was just someone returning files the same as her. But why turn off the lights? No, whoever he was, he was coming for her.

  A few heartbeats went by before she chanced a second glance. She saw nothing this time and crept to the next row. Had she made a sound? Did he know where she was?

  On and on the cat-and-mouse continued as row by row, Ree inched her way back to the door. She was just about to make a run for the exit when a figure glided out into the open. He was dressed in surgical gown, mask and cap. In one hand, he had what appeared to be a long needle. Oh, Jesus.

  As Ree stepped back into the shadows, her heel bumped one of the metal frames. It made barely a sound, but she saw his head come up and around, and before she could turn, he rushed her. Ree couldn’t move. Her shoe was caught on a bolt and as she wrenched free, she lost her balance and crashed to the floor. She tried to scramble away, but he grabbed an ankle and yanked her toward him.

  She lashed out with everything in her—kicking, clawing, biting—as something primitive and feral took hold of her. But she couldn’t get away from him. He straddled her, pinning her to the floor with his knees as one hand clamped around her neck. With his other hand, he lifted the needle.

  Ree grabbed his wrist and tore his flesh with her nails. He dropped the syringe and with an outraged grunt, pressed both hands into her throat. He was crazed now. Like her, only stronger. Spots danced before her eyes as she tried to fight him off. She reached for his mask, fell short, and grabbed a fistful of gown while her left hand scrabbled along the floor. Fingers closing around the syringe, she used every ounce of strength she could muster to bury it in his neck.

  He jerked back, spurting blood and screaming in pain. Ree kicked her way free and struggled to her feet. He would come after her. She had no doubt about that. Stumbling to the door, she flung it open and sprinted down the long, empty hallway.

  It wasn’t until she was back in the south wing that she looked down and saw a silver medallion clutched in her fist.

  Now it was Hayden who looked white as a sheet. “Jesus, Ree. We have to go to the police with this.”

  “No! No police.”

  They were seated in a dark corner booth at the bar near campus where Ree had asked him to meet her. She was too afraid to go back to her apartment.

  “We can’t go to the police,” she said more calmly. “They’d never believe me.”

  “What do you mean, they won’t believe you? You have his blood all over you.”

  She looked down at the tiny spatters and shuddered. “It takes time to run a DNA test. And how do we know the results wouldn’t be compromised? Dr. Farrante apparently has some powerful allies. If I level any sort of accusation against him or the hospital, my career’s as good as dead.”

  “Better than you being dead.”

  “Look at this.” She slid the silver medallion across the table. “It’s just like the one I saw in my dream. Whoever attacked me…he’s one of them.”

  Hayden said slowly, “But as you pointed out, it was just a dream. Or are you starting to believe that Ilsa really is trying to communicate with you?”

  Ree thought about that warning touch at her neck right before the lights went out. “I don’t know what I believe right now.” She massaged her temples with her fingertips.

  She didn’t want to talk about Ilsa’s ghost anymore. She wanted to talk about what she’d seen in that file. She’d told Hayden most of it over the phone, but she still needed to process it. “What was done to Ilsa that night was a secret that would bind those men together forever. No one dared speak the truth because if one fell, they all fell.”

  Hayden said nothing but his gaze was very intense.

  “She was lured to the cemetery that night by her own stepbrother. And when he was finished with her, he left her there for the others. Instead of seeking justice, James Tisdale covered it up. He sacrificed Ilsa in order to protect his son and the family’s political aspirations. She never ran away to Europe. She was committed to an insane asylum.”

  He reached over and took her hand. He seemed to understand that she needed to talk about what she’d read in those files, as if sharing the horror would somehow diminish it.

  “Her family abandoned her, leaving Milton Farrante free to conduct his gruesome experiments. She was subjected to electroconvulsive shock therapy more than ten years before the procedure was formally introduced. He may have performed one of the first lobotomies on her.”

  “Unbelievable that he could do all that without anyone knowing,” Hayden said.

  “The asylums were full of the forgotten back then, including Ilsa�
�s baby. Violet was born perfectly healthy, but she spent her whole life inside that hospital, a human experiment from birth to death for three generations of Farrantes. Poor Ilsa died when Violet was just seven years old.”

  “But I don’t think she moved on,” Hayden said. “I believe her ghost remained in the asylum with Violet. Think about it. All those years, helpless to stop the experiments as she watched her daughter grow into a lonely old woman. But the moment Violet died, Ilsa was set free. And there you were, at Violet’s bedside, a way for Ilsa to finally leave the hospital.”

  “I’m sorry, Hayden, but I just can’t believe something that—”

  “Irrational? Illogical? Crazy? How else can you explain the dream?”

  “I can’t. But there has to be another reason. Maybe something I read or heard a long time ago stuck in my subconscious and Miss Violet’s death triggered it.”

  “What about the cold spots, the frosted windows, the frigid breath at your neck? That’s not your subconscious or imagination. She’s there, Ree. You can’t see her, but she’s there. And she’s not going away until you give her what she wants.”

  “And what is that?”

  His hand tightened around hers. “Put yourself in her place. After everything that was done to her and her daughter, what would you want?”

  “Revenge,” Ree said and shuddered.

  “Exactly. And she needs a conduit, a way to channel her rage.”

  Ree drew her hand away. “That’s crazy. Even ghosts, even Ilsa, can’t make me do something against my will. She can’t use me unless I let her.”

  Hayden’s dark eyes burned into hers. “I wish that were so, but we really have no idea what we’re up against.”

  The Charleston Institute for ParapsychologyElsewhere, it’s called the Institute for Parapsychology Studies, not Paranormal Studies.

  Studies was located on the fringes of the historic district, in a glorious old antebellum with long, gleaming columns and three levels of piazzas to catch the Lowcountry breezes. Hayden let himself in the side entrance and made his way down the hall. He’d called ahead to make sure Dr. Shaw would see him at so late an hour and the older man had agreed. Now he looked up curiously as Hayden entered the office, and motioned for him to take a seat. Tall and dignified, with vivid blue eyes and a shock of white hair, he’d always struck Hayden as the epitome of the slightly absentminded professor.