“But—”
“I said leave it.”
John slipped into the hallway and headed for the stairwell. It would be better to handle the problem where no one could see him. Branaugh didn’t seem to agree with that philosophy. The man came after him and grabbed his shoulder.
“Quit playing games with me, Crowley. I asked you a question.”
John stopped moving and reminded himself that the man had just gone through a traumatic experience. “You can get your hand off of me or I can remove it.”
“I’m a cop. Don’t give me attitude.”
“Oh I’ll give you a lot more than attitude, sport. I’ll give you a concussion if you aren’t careful.”
“I need to know how you’re getting rid of them.”
“Yeah? Why? Planning on going into business as an exorcist?”
“What do you mean?”
“Listen, you’re a cop. I respect that. You have your job to do and you probably do it well. I’m not a cop. I do a different kind of work. What I do doesn’t normally involve guns and high-speed chases, it involves possessions and the occasional werewolf munching on a few unfortunate hunters. I could explain what I’m going to do and I could show you, but I know your type. You’ll want to understand the mechanics involved and I’m not willing to be your teacher.”
He walked as he talked and used his borrowed set of keys to open the stairwell door. He even held the door open for the detective.
“What makes you say that?”
“Because, Detective Branaugh, you have an insatiable curiosity. Probably the best thing in the world for solving cases, but it’s also a great way to get yourself in deeper than you ever want to go.”
“Look, it’s a simple question. How are you going to get rid of those things? Tell me and I’ll leave you alone.”
“I won’t tell you. I’ll show you.” Crowley looked the man over. He seemed intelligent enough, certainly in good physical shape, and probably even honest as far as cops go. “When I’m done, you can nod and say thank you. I’ll even say you’re welcome. What I won’t do is spend the next ten months of my life explaining the mechanics behind something that you want to learn, because that would be, pardon the comparison, the same thing as you showing a kindergartener how to load and fire your revolver.”
“Well that sounds a little pompous.”
“It’s not arrogance. It’s a fact. You aren’t anywhere near ready for this sort of thing and I won’t teach you. If you can understand that, we’ll get along just dandy.”
John made absolutely sure no one else was in the stairwell with them, scanning up and down the green painted stairs and concrete landings, and then opened his hand, releasing the spirits he’d held captive. The pain in his palm disappeared as the dead men manifested.
Branaugh had been busy dealing with his own problems when John dealt with the spirits. Now he saw them without the distractions and backed away as they appeared, still vague and shadowy, even in the fluorescent lights of the landing.
Branaugh stepped back fast, slamming his rear into the concrete wall behind him. Crowley stared at the figures, all of them nearly mindless if their expressions said anything about them. Not stupid, mindless with rage. They’d had their toy taken away and they wanted it back.
One of them, a burly man in a policeman’s uniform, lunged toward Crowley and stopped only when he ran into an unseen barrier. The air where he struck rippled for a moment and then settled as the dead man staggered away, pained by the contact.
“Come on, boys, what makes you think I’m going to let you go from beating on a woman to beating on me?”
“LIES!!!” The voice shook the walls. “SHE TELLS LIES!!!”
Crowley took two steps forward and stared into the eyes of the dead man. “I’ve seen enough to know better than that. Whatever she did to you, you’ve repaid her a hundred times.”
He concentrated and the jumbled memories still raging in his skull gave him what he needed to know. The words came smoothly to his lips and he spoke them.
The shadows standing before him screamed, and next to him the detective joined them, his eyes wide and his face stricken as the air near them crackled and shimmered. Crowley looked away, already knowing what came next. The detective kept staring and John watched him flinch and finally hide his face, too late to miss seeing what lay beyond this life and waited for the spirits.
A moment later there was silence and Crowley offered his hand to the policeman, who accepted it eagerly enough.
John walked back to the break room and Branaugh followed, less anxious for answers than he had been before.
***
Twenty minutes after he’d put Robin back in her cell, the head of Cherry Hill came back to the break room to confront Jonathan Crowley. Phil had finally pulled himself together and taken a seat, but he was in no hurry to involve himself in any more Crowley’s mind games.
He’d had enough of that to keep him for life. He could still feel the man’s hand on his skin, and the power that had entered him through the contact. He felt a part of his mind shut down and as quickly as that the shadows lurking around him had disappeared. Not the ghosts, which he had seen and been able to accept well enough, but the other things, the shapes that didn’t actually enter the room, only moved through the building around him, hidden by walls and levels of the building, but sensed instead of seen.
They’d been aware of him. That was the worst part. He could tell when they looked in his direction that they saw him and some of them hated him.
Just thinking about it made him feel ill. Nothing like that should exist, not in a sane world. He chuckled at that thought. It was hard to call it a sane world when you work in an asylum, or when the likes of Jonathan Crowley were walking around as free as a bird.
He’d be having words with Finney about that as soon as he could, too. Crowley was his patient and as of now, the man should be considered a serious threat.
Phil looked away as the man came back into the room with the police detective along for the ride, and stared at Amelia Dunlow. She was beautiful, but that wasn’t what made him look at her. No, he stared now because until Crowley had touched his head he couldn’t see her except as a vague outline, a silhouette of what he should have seen without any trouble at all. She hadn’t been visible to him when the ghosts were and that puzzled him.
He’d seen everyone else, but Dunlow, the woman who he’d been looking directly at, may as well not have existed.
“Jesus, how many things hide from our perceptions?” He spoke softly, but Crowley looked at him anyway, a small smile playing at his lips. Harrington looked away, still too shaken to want to deal with the man.
“So, now that you understand about ghosts, what do you want done about the ones in this complex, Doc?” Crowley spoke to Finney, and drew Phil’s attention at the same time.
“I’m not sure, Jonathan. I know that they exist but that hardly makes me an expert.” Finney seemed to be holding up well enough but his usual scowl of concentration was stronger than usual. “Are they hurting the patients?”
Crowley laughed. “I don’t know the averages, but yeah, I’d say there’s a chance. Look at the one you just put into her room. Would you say she’d been hurt?”
“Surely she’s the exception.”
“She probably is.” Crowley leaned across the table, smiling. “I’m not saying nearly all of the inmates can see the ghosts or even feel them, but I bet there’s a decent percentage that has been dealing with them for a long while.”
“But why? It doesn’t make any sense?”
“Some just might have gone a little crazy because they can see the ghosts. That’s not as unusual as you might think and it’s not the sort of stuff you discuss in polite society. Talking about seeing dead people can land you in a place just like this one, so a lot of people who see them don’t acknowledge what they see or how it affects them.”
“Then why would it be a problem?”
“For most it wouldn’t.” Crowley stoo
d up and started pacing. He seemed to do that a lot when he was ready to start preaching his beliefs. “It’s not that a person can see the dead, not in most cases. It’s that sometimes the dead can see them.”
“I’m not following you.” Roger’s face drew into a deeper scowl of concentration. “Can’t ghosts normally see what’s around them?”
“I guess that would depend on a lot of factors, Roger, but let’s just leave it at they can’t see most people any more than most people can see them. Now and then though, it’s like being seen by a living person catches their eye and makes them aware of the spectator. Once they know a person is there, it’s all over.”
“Well, that’s just about the most asinine thing I’ve ever heard.” Roger shook his head. “It makes no sense.”
“There are rules that everything must follow. They don’t have to make sense but they’re still in place.”
“What kind of rules?”
“Well, as examples, some ghosts can’t cross running water; certain sorts of evil need to be invited into a place before they can inhabit it. Ghouls eat dead flesh, because something about the live stuff just doesn’t do the job. Every creature in existence has rules it has to follow. Some of them seem pointless, but they aren’t, not really.”
“Why running water?”
“For the ghosts?” Crowley shrugged. “They’re basically electromagnetic in nature, some of them at least. The running water disturbs the electromagnetic field and the ghost can’t get past it.”
Phil cleared his throat. “It’s all bullshit.”
“Excuse me?” Crowley looked toward him.
“I said it’s all bullshit!” Harrington stood up and drew in a deep breath. “You’ve been messing with our minds. I don’t know what you threw in our faces, but obviously it was a hallucinogenic of some sort. I, for one, refuse to play your despicable little games, Jonathan. You can twist the world as much as you want in your own mind, but I’m not falling for it.”
Crowley stared at him for a few seconds, and Phil couldn’t draw in a breath to save his life while those eyes looked through him. Finally the man shook his head and looked away. “I expected you to have an open mind, Doctor Harrington. I guess I misjudged you.” The words were spoken softly, and filled with regret. Harrington felt a brief flash of guilt and crushed it under his mental heel. He refused to let himself be dragged into a discussion of reality with a mental patient.
“Enough of this, Roger! You can’t possibly believe everything he’s telling you.”
“Phil, I watched John’s metamorphosis with my own eyes.” Finney was looking at him, talking to him, but seemed to be distracted. “I saw the ghosts.”
“And you decided it’s easier to believe that Jonathan Crowley is a mystical monster hunter than it is to believe that he’s pulling a fast one? Have you lost your mind, man?”
Roger’s eyes looked near Phil, instead of at him. “Phil, I was there. I saw him change. I didn’t sit out in the hallway and have a stranger come up to me and introduce himself as your patient. I watched his body grow younger before my eyes.”
“And you accepted it without question.” Phil shook his head, disgusted with the man he normally admired. “You allowed a woman into this building because she was supposed to know Jonathan Crowley, a man who managed to elude the police for six years. Did it ever occur to you she might have helped him out?”
“Helped him how?”
“The same way a magician’s assistant helps a stage performer. For all you know, the real Jonathan Crowley is outside of this building and you’ve been dealing with a half-decent impersonator.”
“That’s a load of crap and you know it.” Finney shook his head. “I’m not a complete imbecile, Phil.”
“Really? You find it so much easier to believe that this man,” he jabbed a finger at Crowley, who simply smiled as Phil continued, “is performing miracles? Forgive me my cynical nature, Roger, but have you even taken his fingerprints to compare to the ones on file?”
Roger Finney looked away, embarrassed. No, he hadn’t.
“That’s what I thought. You are an intelligent man. Roger. Please start acting like one.”
With nothing further to say and nothing to add, he rose from his seat and left the room, glad to be away from Crowley and whatever sort of delusions he wanted to spread around.
Either Roger would pull himself together and handle the situation properly, or Phil would take matters into his own hand. He refused to be a party to the foolishness going on around him.
As for Crowley, he was still Phil’s patient. If he had to, he’d put a muzzle on the man and fix everything once and for all.
“I know how to take care of trouble, Mr. Crowley. I have my ways.” No one heard him speak as he walked down the hallway. No one living at least. If there were ghosts to witness his words, they kept to themselves.
***
Amelia watched the exchanges and said nothing. This was Jonathan’s show now and she knew better than to interfere. He had his own way of handling things, and he usually worked alone.
Back when he worked, that was. Now she didn’t really know what he was going to do. If she had to take a guess, torturing her to death was probably an option. Common sense told her to get the hell away from the man while she could, but she’d never run from him in the past and she had to hope her heart was working better than her brain.
She’d zoned out for a few minutes without realizing it. When she tuned in to what was being said again, Jonathan was saying he’d look over the rest of the asylum the next day. “I’m tired and still adjusting to the changes, Doc. So I need you to find me a room without bars and I need to get some rest.”
“There’s an office just past mine, John. I’ll get you a key and you can call it home for the next few days.” He shook his head as he spoke, apparently surprising himself with his answer.
“Listen, not that I don’t appreciate the help you gave me, but aren’t you supposed to stay locked up?” The detective was looking from one man to the next and shaking his head.
“Nope. John Doe is supposed to be locked up. He’s a little old man with one leg. How the hell could I be him?” Crowley smiled. “You can call me John Crowley; I’m here as a special consultant on some unsolved crimes.”
“No, seriously, how are you going to work this?”
Dr. Finney answered. “I can’t honestly prove that the man in front of us is the same man who was brought in here the other day, and I don’t want to be the one to try proving it in a court of law. John is doing us a favor, and we’re going to have to work out the details later, but for now, I can trust that he’s not going anywhere.”
“Yeah?”
“We’ve had two lockdowns today, both caused by John not being in the right places. I think he could have managed an escape if that was his intention. So, yes, I think we can trust him.”
Branaugh nodded his head. “Okay then. I’m heading out. I’ll probably come by tomorrow again.” He looked at Amelia with a pathetic amount of hope in his eyes. “You need a lift anywhere, Ms. Dunlow?”
“No, I’ll be staying here with Jonathan tonight.”
All three men looked at her. None of them had expected the announcement.
“I don’t think that would be the wisest course of action, Amelia.” Crowley’s voice was low and dangerous.
“We have things to discuss, Jonathan.”
He made no response.
Ten minutes after the detective had made his departure both Amelia and Crowley were shown to the office. Finney worked fast and had arranged for two rollaway beds that looked about as comfortable as medieval torture devices.
They would do.
Crowley flopped onto his bed and immediately closed his eyes, ready to call it a night.
Amelia took the time to carefully set her suit aside and slipped into her bed wearing nothing but her underwear.
The silence lasted for most of an hour. During that time she looked at the man she’d come to see
and did little else, remembering their encounters in the past.
They’d met the first time shortly after her father had summoned her. Amelia Dunlow had died at the age of two, and in his grief he resorted to something he’d once promised Crowley he would never do again. He’d resorted to sorcery.
In his time, Vernon Dunlow had generated a fortune for himself and even found a wife using magic to expedite matters. He’d gone out of his way to be careful, never using his ability to summon demons to cause anyone harm. That all changed when his daughter Amelia was killed in a car accident caused by a drunken fool. Vernon Dunlow had given up dealing with demons and the like by then. He knew the risks and he wanted nothing to do with them. Unlike several people he’d met in his lifetime he’d managed not to get himself destroyed, but he acknowledged that in time he would make a foolish slip up if he kept going.
His reminder came when he summoned a spirit to destroy the driver who’d left his daughter little more than a lifeless shell in the hospital, brain dead and fading fast. The demon did its job and left, but this time around he’d screwed up and failed to properly seal the passageway that brought it out. In a perfect world the monster would have been sent back to whatever hell it came from and that would have been the end of the troubles. Instead the thing slipped away and started looking for trouble. Crowley managed to stop it before the body count went too high.
He also paid a visit to Vernon Dunlow. She didn’t know all of the details, but she knew enough to understand that her father made promises and handed a fortune in books over to Crowley, many of which were irreplaceable.
He told Crowley he’d given him all of the books. He lied. He’d kept exactly one, the one that should have let him heal his daughter. The spell took time. Amelia stayed in a coma for almost two years before the preparations were complete.
Apparently her father had lost his edge somewhere along the way. The idea was to summon a demon that could heal her injuries and cast it back down. For the second time in his life, he got it wrong and the end result was messy. What he’d managed to do instead was to summon the creature that now called itself Amelia Dunlow. The most common term used is “succubus.” She was a demon, but not the sort that specialized in healing.
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