Seaforth Prison (The Haunted Book 3)

by Patrick Logan

  Stay with me, Smitts. Stay the fuck with me.

  He wondered where the other guards were, and then Ben scolded himself for not thinking about his walkie sooner.

  They worked on a different system than the other electronics in Seaforth, so they should work.

  Please, please work, Ben thought as he pulled the walkie from his belt loop. With a slight hesitation, he turned the dial and pressed the walkie.

  “Perry, Lenny, this is Warden Ben Tristen. I need your—”

  He let go of the button for a second, and then swore again when all he heard was static.

  Maybe the walkies somehow worked on the same system as the rest of the prison. Unlikely, but possible. Or maybe it was the—what did Peter call it—electrical clouds or some shit? Maybe the lightning in the sky had fried them.

  “Peter, does the—” reset affect the talkies, he was about to ask, when the light on the card reader beside the door beeped.

  Ben didn’t hesitate. He scanned his card, while his other hand, the one still clutching the walkie, reached for the cross around his neck.

  Please…

  A second later, the door beeped and the warden of Seaforth Prison pulled it open as quickly as he could manage.

  “Smitts!” he yelled as he crouched down beside the man.

  Smitts’s eyes fluttered, but they didn’t open. Ben gently peeled the man’s hands away from his stomach, and then cringed at the blood that veritably gushed from an inch-wide wound.

  “Fuck! Peter, call Lenny! Get him up here now!” Ben covered the wound in Smitts’s stomach with his hands. It was hot, and his fingers were immediately soaked with blood. “Stay with me, Smitts. Stay the fuck with me.”

  Smitts groaned, but said nothing.

  “Peter!”

  Still squeezing Smitts’s stomach, he turned his head back to the door. It had since shut behind him.

  “Peter!” he yelled again, his heartrate and his voice escalating.

  The door suddenly opened, and Peter peeked out. He opened his mouth to say something, but no words came out.

  “What the fuck is going on?”

  “Lenny…the guards…the…” His eyes became vacant and he started to swoon. Ben feared that the man was going to faint.

  “Peter! Keep it together! What about the guards? About Lenny? What happened?”

  The man just stood in the doorway, his mouth agape, his hands hanging limply at his sides.

  “Peter!”

  If it weren’t for Smitts lying on the ground before him, Ben would have gone to his IT man and throttled him with his arthritic hands.

  Peter’s eyes suddenly became clear.

  “They’re all dead, Ben…every last one of them is dead.”

  Chapter 19

  “I never signed up for this shit,” Shelly whispered.

  Robert turned to her, his own eyes wide.

  “You didn’t? Well I sure as hell didn’t either. This is insane. All of it. Sometimes…sometimes I think I was in the car with Wendy the day she died. Sometimes I think that all three of us—me, Wendy, Amy—were all killed in that accident.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  Robert struggle to keep his anger at bay.

  “Why not? I mean, does any of this make sense to you? That I have a twin brother? That I was adopted? That my real father is fucking Leland Black, the Goat, fucking Satan of the underworld?”

  Shelly barely managed to keep his eye.

  “Oh, lest we forget the fact that somehow you and I and Cal—wherever the fuck he is—are now responsible for keeping this gate closed, for keeping demons out of our world.”

  Robert grabbed at his temples.

  “It’s fucked, Shelly—it’s royally fucked. And I have no idea what to do.”

  Shelly moved to him quickly, wrapping her arms around his waist, hugging him tight.

  He didn’t resist, and instead buried his head in her blonde hair. For a while, nobody said anything.

  It was Sean who eventually broke the silence.

  “I can’t force you to do anything, Robert. All I can do is—as before—ask you to help. But I can’t stress how important it is that you do what you can to keep this rift in the Marrow closed. This isn’t like Ruth Harlop, and not even like Andrew Shaw, although the latter was closer to the truth, but it’s something differently entirely. I need you to come with me and help send Carson to the Marrow—to send him there with Leland, to keep them all there, wrapped up tightly in their own personal hell.”

  Robert sniffed, wiped the tears from his eyes, and then looked at the man.

  How many times have we met since I’ve been an adult? Three? Four, maybe?

  And yet none of those times did the disheveled man before him look the way he did now.

  It had been impossible for him to abandon Ruth and Patricia and Dr. Mansfield. How likely was it for him to abandon everyone and everything he cared about in this world?

  Robert sighed.

  He had made his decision, but he couldn’t vouch for Shelly. Robert turned to her, using his fingers to lift her chin.

  “You don’t have—”

  She pushed away.

  “Don’t do that, Robert,” she said sternly. “Don’t fucking mansplain that this to me. I know I don’t have to fucking go with you. But I will. I will go with you—I’ll help you. I’ll help because I l—”

  Robert felt his body inadvertently go tense.

  Shelly punched him on the shoulder.

  “Cause I like going with you, retard. What you think I was going to say?”

  Her eyes narrowed.

  “Nothing,” Robert grumbled, turning away from her glare and bringing his attention back to Sean. “Well, what do we do now?”

  The man looked relieved, but the sweat on his brow remained.

  “I’ve got a chopper waiting nearby to take us to the island,” Sean said.

  Why am I not surprised?

  Robert felt like he had before heading to the Seventh Ward, when Cal had had his crowbar and Shelly her bag of toys. And he was armed with nothing. In fact, with the questions that still boiled in his brain, he felt armed with less than nothing.

  Cal in his stupid bathrobe and turtleneck, Cal with—

  “What about Cal?” he asked suddenly, remembering how his friend had taken off with the kid with the cameras.

  Sean’s brow furrowed and he shook his head.

  “No time—we have to leave now. The rift is growing. Can’t you feel it?”

  Robert started to shake his head, but Sean interrupted.

  “Close your eyes, Robert. Close your eyes and concentrate on what you saw in the Marrow.”

  Despite not wanting to listen to the man standing across from him, Robert felt compelled to do so. And when he closed his eyes and concentrated, he thought he felt something.

  “I think—”

  “No, don’t think,” Sean instructed. Robert felt Shelly hug him again. “Don’t think—just let your mind go blank and feel.”

  At first, nothing happened. But as Robert started to breathe more deeply, to center himself with his core, he thought he heard something.

  The crash of waves.

  “What—?”

  “Shhh.”

  Waves, crashing on the shore. Peaceful, serene.

  Perfect.

  And then lightning filled the sky.

  The sound of thunder.

  Of screams, of terror.

  Robert’s eyes snapped open. His chest had gotten so tight that he thought he was having a heart attack.

  “We have to go.”

  Sean nodded.

  “I know, we—”

  “No,” Robert said sternly. “We have to go now.”

  Chapter 20

  Warden Ben Tristen grabbed Smitts by the shoulders and dragged him backwards into the control room. Despite his strength, it was still a challenge to maneuver the man’s wide, muscular shoulders through the door that pale-faced Peter held open. Breathing heavily, Ben f
inally cleared the threshold and then fell to the ground with Smitts in his lap.

  Peter let the door to close behind them.

  “Grab gauze and press it to the wound,” Ben instructed, still sitting.

  “Gauze? This is a control room, we—”

  Ben gently laid Smitts’s head on the floor, and then stood, groaning as he stretched his back.

  “Grab anything, then, something to keep Smitts from bleeding out, Peter!”

  Ben searched the room, purposefully avoiding looking at the monitors. Peter’s words still echoed in his head—the guards, they’re all dead—but he must have just been overreacting. The alternative was unthinkable.

  Smitts groaned, and Ben focused on the task at hand.

  “There!” he said, pointing at a pile of microfiber cloths piled on a small metal cart near the door. “Grab those and press them on the wound.”

  Peter did as he was instructed, but Ben noted that as he avoided looking at the monitors, Peter avoid looking at Smitts’s bloody midsection.

  “Press them hard, Peter.”

  Peter dropped to a knee, placed the thick pile of blue cloths on the wound, and pressed hard. Smitts’s brow furrowed, but his eyes remained closed.

  Given the amount of blood outside the door and the smear from when he had been dragged into the room, Ben wasn’t sure how long the man would last.

  The warden took a deep breath, wiped the sweat from his brow, then finally turned to face the monitors. His heart was racing so fast in his chest that he felt dizzy.

  For a split second, Ben felt relief wash over him. His eyes first fell on one of the small monitors, which showed Carson still sitting cross-legged in the center of his cell. He still didn’t understand how the man had been in the stairwell just a few minutes ago and was now locked in his cell, but not much this day made sense to him.

  His eyes moved to the large monitor next, and a moan escaped his lips.

  “No, please, Jesus, no.”

  Ben felt lightheaded, and grabbed the back of Peter’s chair to avoid falling to his knees. He closed his eyes tightly, trying to will the scene away. When he opened them again, he was staring through tears.

  The mess hall that Smitts and Ben had just finished plowing through their breakfast was displayed front and center. Only now it wasn’t empty.

  Nearly a dozen men dressed in navy guard uniforms were hanging from the ceiling by nooses made from everything from electric cords to twisted sheets. Their eyes were open, vacant, their tongues hanging from mouths that stood out on their purple faces.

  “Oh my god,” Ben whispered. “Oh my god.” He closed his eyes and shook his head, tears streaming down his cheeks now. “Please, Lord…how is this possible? How the fuck did this happen?”

  Even though the question wasn’t intended to be answered, Peter replied nonetheless.

  “The inmates…they’re out,” he said, his voice sounding strangely distant.

  Ben gripped the chair back so hard that the leather split. Then, with his thick fingers embedded in the material, he pulled, tearing a huge flap back, revealing thick yellow foam beneath.

  “How the fuck did this happen?” he growled. He clenched his teeth and resisted the urge to throw the chair through the monitors in front of him. “How the fuck…?”

  Then, unexpectedly, an image of Father Callahan, his stooped form making a slow path up the long steps to the front of the building, flashed in his mind.

  Ben forced himself to look at the monitor again.

  He found Perry’s thin, dark face among the dead, and there was Lenny, spinning slowly, his back to the camera. Ben’s eyes skipped quickly across their faces, trying not to take in any of the horrifying details.

  “Father Callahan,” he whispered, not finding the old priest hanging in the mess hall. “Where is Father Callahan? And where are the inmates?”

  When there was no answer, he turned to face Peter.

  The man was still pressing on Smitts’s wound, but his eyes were locked on the monitor.

  “They’re all dead,” he whispered. “He promised…they…when…”

  Ben wiped more tears from his cheeks, and took a deep breath. All he wanted to do was collapse, curl up into a ball like a child and weep.

  But he couldn’t do that.

  He still had a prison to run. No matter if he and Peter and Smitts, who was dying on the floor by their feet, and Father Callahan, wherever he was, were the only ones left worth saving, he had a job to do.

  There were more people to think about than just Seaforth Prison guards. If, somehow, Hargrove hadn’t taken the tug and left, if Callahan had convinced him to stay, then there was a boat tied up less than a hundred yards from the front door. And if the inmates managed to get to that…

  Ben shook his head.

  No, that’s not possible.

  But he had said the same thing about the power blinking out.

  And about the prisoners escaping from their cells.

  And about nearly his entire staff being murdered.

  And about Carson fucking tearing Quinn’s eyes out of his head.

  A single tear rolled down Ben’s wrinkled cheek, and he quickly wiped it away with the back of his hand. Then he compartmentalized everything he had witnessed this day, burying the horrors in the dark recesses of his mind.

  “Where are the inmates?” he asked again after clearing his throat.

  When Peter said nothing and just continued to stare, wide-eyed, Ben snapped his fingers in front of the man’s face.

  Peter shuddered, then seemed to come to. A second later, Smitts groaned, and Peter’s eyes rolled in that direction.

  Ben snapped again.

  “Peter! It’s me and you now, we need to keep it together! Where are the inmates? Where are the fucking inmates?”

  Ben reached for him, intent on shaking some life back into the man. If Peter went dark, all was lost.

  He was as good as dead like the others—there was no way he would be able to operate the complicated computer system.

  But before he grabbed Peter, the man whipped around and strode toward his now torn chair. He sat, and without another word began clacking away at his keyboard, thankfully shifting the horrific image of the men hanging from the mess hall rafters off screen. Then he began to systematically shift through the different cameras in Seaforth, one at a time.

  The first image that appeared was of the row of cells from gen pop, and Ben swallowed hard. The doors to the cells were partway open, their interiors empty.

  “Next,” he said, his throat suddenly dry.

  The following image was of one of the hallways, also empty.

  “Next,” he repeated.

  The next four images were the same; empty, as if the prison had long since been abandoned.

  Where the fuck are they?

  The next image showed Carson, the little fuck still sitting on the floor in his cell meditating.

  In some sick way, Ben was glad that at least Carson wouldn’t have the pleasure of killing them himself. If, of course, he had been in his cell the whole time.

  Somehow, though, in ways that he didn’t understand, Ben knew that Carson was behind this.

  All of this.

  He didn’t rightly believe Father Callahan’s ramblings, but he felt, deep down in his guts, that this was all Carson’s doing.

  “Nex—” he started, but Peter had already switched cameras.

  The air was suddenly sucked from Ben’s lungs.

  “What the fuck are they doing?” he whispered.

  Peter didn’t answer. Even Smitts, still lying on the floor clutching his bleeding stomach, went quiet, although with his eyes closed he couldn’t have seen what was on the screen.

  Ben squinted hard.

  The inmates, all twenty-two of them, were huddled together, standing outside the door to Cell Block E, their heads hung low, their bodies pressed together. Ben had to concentrate to even pick out the fact that they were actually breathing.

 
“What are they waiting for?” he whispered after staring at the scene for a full minute. “What are they doing?”

  Peter shook his head.

  And then there was an audible click, the characteristic sound of the door to Cell Block E opening, and then the screen fizzled with static.

  They were waiting to get in.

  They were waiting to see Carson.

  Movement in one of the side monitors drew Ben’s gaze. It was the only monitor that showed an image.

  And it was of Carson’s cell.

  He was smiling, a shit-eating, ear-to-ear grin.

  Chapter 21

  “You’re joking, right?”

  Sean shook his head, while Shelly, who had asked the question, just stared.

  Robert, fueled by what he had seen in his mind—the tearing of the Marrow, of the man named Carson sitting on the floor of his cell his face covered in shadows—didn’t have time for questions.

  “Shelly, we need to hurry,” he shouted over the sound of the helicopter’s blades chopping through the night air.

  Robert knew little of helicopters, but the bulky black shape was clearly military—this wasn’t a chopper that took you for a leisure flight over the Grand Canyon. The nose was thick, heavily armored, and there was a strange lack of markings over the entire exterior.

  One call from Sean and the helicopter had landed in under ten minutes on the empty field behind the Harlop Estate. It wasn’t just the presence of the helicopter that raised eyebrows, but that Sean had access to one. On call, no less.

  Robert was reminded of Leland’s words, when the man had questioned what he really knew about Sean. About either of them, really.

  He still wasn’t convinced that Leland was his father, or that he had ever been at the church with the large wooden door, holding hands with Sean, all those years ago. He wasn’t even sure if what he had seen of the man in the cell was real.

  It could just all be an elaborate trick; Sean could have slipped him some sort of powerful hallucinogen and had primed his mind to these ideas.

  But why? To what end? And why him?

  Robert shook his head.

  But the Marrow, the faces in the flames…Amy’s voice…that had been real.