Ann Marie's Asylum (Master and Apprentice Book 1)

by Christopher Rankin

  “Hello my king,” the nurse said. “I have the boy right here. Just like I promised.”

  “Are the animals there yet?” Bernard asked.

  “They’re in the cage and ready to go.”

  “Well done,” said Bernard through the phone. “The rest of the equipment should be arriving shortly.” Just before Bernard hung up, he told the albino nurse, “Don’t you dare scare that boy too much before it’s time.”

  “OK,” she said. “Fine.”

  “Don’t use that exasperated tone with me. Didn’t I tell you how important it was to do everything exactly as I’ve laid out?”

  “I guess.”

  “Didn’t I tell you that this is a very specific ritual and the boy must feel happy and content for this all to work?”

  “You told me.”

  “The same thing goes for the animals. I know they’re in a cage but I want them treated humanely before it happens.”

  “Understood,” the freckled nurse answered.

  At that moment, one of the other members of the coven burst into the pool room, shouting, “The trucks are here! The trucks are here!”

  “Good,” she said. “Now get the cables set up over the pool so we can get the animals in position.”

  Four members of the group started to put the finishing touches on some sort of steel cable system to hang over the empty pool. The series of pulleys and lines ended at a large metal cage. The steel box looked like it could have held several man-eating lions.

  The cage was packed with pet dogs, perhaps twenty or twenty-five in total. They formed a huddling, shaking mess in one corner of the cage. All the animals seemed terrified.

  “You idiots! They aren’t supposed to be scared shitless!” The albino shouted when she saw them. “I don’t even know if the ritual will work now!” She was suddenly hit with an idea and looked down at the little boy she had by the wrist. Crouching down so she was eye-level with the boy, she asked him, “Do you like doggies?”

  The boy smiled and nodded with force.

  “Do doggies like you?”

  “Doggies like me.”

  “Well,” she said, “I was going to let you meet all the doggies later. Hmm. Since you like doggies so much, do you think you might be able to cheer some doggies up right now?”

  “Why are they sad?” The boy asked.

  “Because they’re lonely and they want to see you real bad.”

  “OK,” said the little boy. “I’ll do it.”

  “Very good,” The albino beamed. “I’m gonna tell your parents how good you were and maybe they won’t be mad at you anymore. Maybe they’ll want you to come home again.” She directed one of the coven members to take the boy by the hand and bring him over to the cage. “Go ahead,” she told him. “Get inside and be careful not to let any doggies out.”

  The little boy thought about it for a moment. One of the other coven members grabbed him before he was ready and shoved him into the cage. With the cage so packed with dogs, the boy was nearly out of breathing room. The dogs seemed happy to see the boy and started to lick his face.

  “Good boy,” The albino nurse told him through the bars. “You’re so good at cheering up the doggies. Keep up the good work.”

  Standing in a dark puddle of urine, the little boy tried to pet and comfort as many dogs as he could. Many of them were still too afraid to stop trembling and whimpering. The little boy did his best to console the dogs around him. “When can we all come out?” He asked her.

  “Not just yet,” she told him. “You’re doing so well. Keep trying to make the doggies feel better.”

  Just outside the abandoned school, three military fuel transport trucks idled. The albino and two of her coven lieutenants met the trucks outside. “Get the cage in position after the pool is full,” she told them. The remaining members of the coven connected a series of fire hoses to the trucks and set the other ends in the empty pool inside.

  At that point, Bernard called the albino and asked her, “Are we ready, my dear?”

  “Almost.”

  “Did the trucks from the slaughterhouse arrive yet?”

  “They’re here. We’re filling the pool now.”

  “Are the animals upset?”

  “I forgot to ask them.”

  “Very amusing. What about the boy?”

  “He’s in the cage already. I told him to calm the dogs down.”

  “Well,” said Bernard, “that was somewhat clever of you.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Follow my instructions to the letter. I wish I could be there, my dear,” Bernard said before hanging up.

  Blood from the slaughterhouse pumped from the three trucks into the bottom of the gym pool. When the albino got inside, the pool was filled up to three feet with black-red fresh cow’s blood.

  The indoor pool room smelled like the ventricle of a heart. While the pool continued to fill, the coven turned off the portable lights they brought with them. They started lighting candles everywhere.

  Once the cable system was finished, the albino directed one of the homeless kids to hoist the cage over the pool. He turned on an electric winch that started to drawn the steel cage up over the pool.

  When the cage was dangling in the air over the blood, the boy inside started to yell. “What’s happening? What are you doing? Put us down!” When the cage stopped swaying and he was able to look out the bars, he looked down at the pool of blood and started to cry. “Please. What is this?” He begged.

  “Don’t worry, honey,” The hooded albino shouted over the sound of pumping blood. “Everything is going to be fine. Just please try to enjoy the ride for now. Just focus on your doggies and make sure they know you love them.”

  “Let me out!” the boy yelled. “Let me out. Please!”

  That made the albino angry. “Hug the damn doggies!” she shouted. “They’re frightened out of their minds and you’re not helping. They need you!”

  ...

  At the same time, while Ann Marie circled an area of Los Angeles totally unknown to her, the shadow people continued to point the way. All types of human and animal silhouettes poured from every dark nook and cranny. They spilled onto the LA street like bats out of a subterranean crack in the Earth. They all seemed to want her to go somewhere.

  As she drove, she detected a greater insistence to their directions, as though they needed her to hurry up. A shadow of a rotund man in a sombrero hat projected onto the wall of an old industrial building. The figure jabbed his finger down the road.

  When she arrived to the outside of the abandoned high school, a crowd of hundreds of painted silhouettes jumped up and down in front to get her attention. They waved in a fury for her to help. She noticed the activity outside, the big fuel trucks, the cars and the hoses. She parked across the street and began to walk over.

  When her foot touched the pavement, she was overcome with a sickening feeling of dread. The shadow figures continued, with even greater intensity, to plead for her to go inside.

  Her phone rang and when she picked up, it was Dade. “Are you in trouble?” he asked her without a greeting.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I’m seeing something very strange. Maybe I’m still under the influence of the chemicals.”

  “No. That’s not what it is. Are you seeing living shadows?”

  “Yes! That’s exactly it. They want me to go inside this old high school. I have no idea why.”

  “Don’t go in there. Wait for me.”

  “I don’t know. They seem to need me right away. They seem insistent.”

  “It won’t take me long to get there. I’ll bring reinforcements just in case.”

  “I don’t know,” said Ann Marie. “Whatever it is I’m seeing seems to be telling me to go now.”

  “Can we pretend you’re an adult with a properly developed sense of self preservation for once? Just for tonight.”

  “Fine. I’ll wait.”
<
br />   “Promise?”

  “Fine.”

  Dade hung up and Ann Marie was left to wait in her car across the street. The shadow figures jumped up and down, seeming even more emphatic that she walk into the school at that very moment. She tried to wait but she found that she couldn’t ignore the shadow people.

  Even though she wanted to keep her promise to Dade, she felt that whatever strange force was creating the shadow figures was also begging for help. She left her car across the street and headed for the front door of the high school.

  Inside, the place was pitch black with only a few traces of candlelight coming from down the hall. The shadow figures followed her inside and pointed down the hallway toward the gym. They held up their fingers to their mouths as if to tell Ann Marie that she needed to be quiet. Halfway down the hall, she heard a little boy crying out.

  “Let me out!” the boy cried.

  Then Ann Marie heard the albino nurse’s voice, saying, “Come on now, little soldier. All you need to do is pet those doggies while we finish up what we need to do.”

  The boy started screaming. “No!” he shouted. “Now! I want out now!”

  Ann Marie followed the fire hoses down the hallway until she detected the smell of blood. When she reached the pool, she had to throw her hand over her mouth to cover up the gasp.

  The stainless steel zoo cage containing the dogs and the child were dangling over the swimming pool. It was filled up so high with blood that it was spilling over the edges. All around the pool, teenagers and young adults wore black robes and held hands by burning candles.

  They didn’t notice Ann Marie at first but she finally gasped when she saw the boy suspended in the tiger cage. That caught the coven’s attention.

  “Don’t be afraid, Ann Marie,” The albino said as they all turned around to find her standing in the doorway. “We’re always looking for new members. We could use a good chemist.”

  Ann Marie took a step back, saying, “I think I made a mistake. I think I’m in the wrong place.”

  Two of the males in the group, both buzz cut from time in the military, held Ann Marie by the shoulders. “You like magic?” one of them asked. “You’re gonna want to join when you see this crazy shit.”

  The albino stood at the end of the pool by the diving boards and commanded silence from the group. “With just a push of this button,” she said, “we’re going to change the universe.” She held up a three-button switch that was wired to the winch holding up the boy. “From death comes life,” she chanted. “From death comes life.”

  Suddenly, Ivy Cavatica walked in and the entire room took notice. She was wearing an oversized tee shirt that she had fallen asleep in. There was notable confusion in her face. She seemed not to know what exactly she was doing there. The rest of the group was expecting her.

  The albino took her by the hand and led her to the end of the pool with the rest of the coven. She handed Ivy the switch that dropped the cage into the blood. Then the albino held up her phone to Ivy’s ear. Bernard was on the line.

  “My lovely,” he said into her ear. “This is your big moment. You’re going to show this trash what real magic is. Sorry your master can’t be there with you.” Then he hung up.

  The sound of Bernard’s voice seemed to rekindle whatever hot, evil poison he had injected into Ivy. Her face went from blank and sleepy to vengeful.

  The entire coven and most of the recruits repeated in sync, “From death comes life! From death comes life!”

  The little boy was screaming and pulling at the bars on the cage. The dogs barked, whimpered and howled.

  “MoneySexPower,” they all chanted together over and over. “From death comes life. Bring us our creation. MoneySexPower. From our sacrifice. MoneySexPower.”

  “Blah Blah Blah,” said Dade Harkenrider, who was suddenly standing in the doorway. “Yada Yada.” He turned to Ivy and asked her, “Where did you find out about the blood ritual?”

  “We’re getting more powerful everyday,” Ivy answered coldly. “It’s just a matter of time.”

  “Time until what?”

  “Time until we’re strong enough that you can’t just come in here and push us around.” She took a few steps toward him. “Time until we’re more powerful than you.”

  “It’s a worthwhile effort,” said Dade. “I’m sorry you’re doomed to failure.”

  “We’ll see,” Ivy jabbed. She quickly hit the button for the winch to drop the cage, but nothing happened.

  When she looked down, she noticed a tiny, mean little metal scorpion that had just clawed through the wire to the controller. The little thing shot her in the face with a blue laser and temporarily blinded her.

  Behind Dade Harkenrider, a full-size DeathStalker raised its attack tail. Perhaps fifty or sixty baby DeathStalkers, each about the size of a hamster, poured from the drone’s back. The baby drones quickly climbed the walls and made their way to the tiger cage.

  They all joined metal claws until they formed a chain that safely secured the cage to the ceiling. More drones joined claws and formed a bridge over the pool. The network of metal scorpions guided the cage down and safely to the side of the pool. One of them burned through the handle on the cage, giving the boy a chance to escape. He was so afraid that he stayed huddled up with the dogs in the corner.

  Dade teleported across the room to Ann Marie. As he rematerialized, he hit one of the men holding her in the face. The punch was so forceful that the whiplash sent the man’s eyeballs right out of his head to dangle like snot. The other man turned and ran away with the other coven members.

  “I would get out of here fast,” Dade commanded them all. “I’m not going to be nice to the stragglers.”

  Ivy was the last one to leave. She was just beginning to shake the burning in her eyes from the laser blast. “I’m not afraid of you, Harkenrider! I don’t care if everyone else is! I don’t care what you can do or who your mother is.”

  “I know, Ivy. I suppose this is when you tell me that this isn’t the last I’ve heard from you.”

  She slipped out the door.

  Dade and Ann Marie were left in the candlelight with the black pool of blood. The air smelled metallic. She went over to the cage to find the boy huddled in the corner. The dogs were beginning to bark and jump to get out.

  “It’s OK,” she told the boy. “Come on out.”

  The little boy seemed to be in shock and didn’t hear her.

  “He’s kidnapped,” said Dade. “He’s not some runaway or foster kid. He came from a loving home and his parents are probably combing the city for him.”

  “Where’s my babysitter?” The little boy asked them from inside the cage. “Why did she bring me here?”

  All across the boy’s face, a churning mess of tattooed lines was starting to fade away. The evil black symbols seemed to be crying out one last time before their death.

  Ann Marie and Dade looked at one another. “I doubt she’ll be babysitting for you again,” he told the boy.

  The dogs too,” Dade said. “Their owners are definitely looking for them.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I’ve been keeping track of all the lost pets signs. I’ve been keeping the phone numbers. We’ll have the computer send out a call to tell them to come down here.”

  “What the hell were these people trying to do?”

  “Drown them in blood,” said Dade. “At exactly the same time.”

  “Why?”

  “To make things happen.”

  “What kind of things?”

  Dade didn’t seem to hear her. “They didn’t learn this on their own,” he said as though talking to himself. “Bernard must have taught them somehow.”

  Chapter 12

  Ivy, The Lost

  A few days later, the Asylum Corporation’s CEO, Philip Handley, and three of the most senior board members were gathered in a meeting hidden from their official schedules. The four me
n had met fifteen minutes early to give them enough time to prepare for the arrival of their guests, Dr. Bernard Mengel and the corporation’s rising star and newest vice president, Ivy Cavatica.

  “She’s beautiful but she scares the hell out of me,” said one of the men to the CEO. “I’m afraid all she has to do is give me one of those looks and my dick will fall off.”

  Most of the men laughed but the CEO looked back at him as though the man had just made a social blunder. “Keep your mouth shut when they get here if you value that dick of yours. Bernard Mengel is not a man to be trifled with.”

  “I’ll just be glad when this is over,” said one of other men. “I thought Harkenrider gave me the creeps.”

  Just then, Ivy barged through the double doors and started talking as though already in the middle of a sentence. “Attention, please. Attention, gentlemen,” she said as she held up her cellular phone high into the air. “ Doctor Bernard Mengel is on the line.”

  “Fine. Put him on,” said the CEO, trying his best to maintain his look of confidence.

  “Gentlemen,” Bernard said through the speakerphone into the conference room, “I apologize that I am unable to be there in the flesh. Please accept the word of my beautiful apprentice as though it were my own. Ivy, my dear, please do your best not to scare these poor spineless gentlemen.” He hung up and Ivy put away the phone.

  “What’s this about?” The CEO asked her somewhat impatiently.

  She looked back at him like she wanted to slit his throat. “It’s far beyond a small minded fool like you to comprehend. Let’s just say that Dade Harkenrider has recipes for drugs that Bernard and I are very interested in.”

  “I see,” said the CEO. “I take it these discoveries are also of interest to the corporation.”

  “Where you come in,” Ivy told him, “is you’re going to help us get these recipes.”

  “Why don’t you just hack into his computer files?” Asked the man to the CEO’s right. “Isn’t that done fairly regularly in our circles?”

  “He’s developed his own encryption algorithm to hide it all from us,” said one of the other men at the table. “Whatever it is, it’s advanced. We’ve tried before but we haven’t been able to break it.”