Seaforth Prison (The Haunted Book 3)

by Patrick Logan

  “The faces in the flames.”

  “Yes,” Sean said simply. “And the walls are weakening. Every time someone’s quiddity stays too long here on earth, every time their decision is delayed, the barrier between this world and theirs gets thinner, and he gets stronger.”

  Robert’s brow furrowed.

  “So what happened to Leland? Why is he on the shores? Why is he…did he die?”

  This time, Sean didn’t answer.

  “Sean? What happened to Leland? How did he get to the Marrow?”

  Still nothing.

  Robert leaned forward and reached for the man across from him. Sean immediately recoiled, and aimed a finger at Robert’s face.

  “Don’t touch me,” he warned, his voice returning to the hardened rasp of which Robert was more familiar. “Leland has branded you, and if you touch me he will be able to find me. That can’t happen.”

  Robert leaned away, taken aback by the man’s sudden change in mood. This time, he refused to let it go.

  “What do you mean? Fuck, Sean, what happened to him?”

  Sean pressed his lips together tightly and then turned his gaze to Shelly.

  She was waking, a look of confusion on her face.

  “That’s it, no more stories. We have work to do.”

  Shelly groaned and stretched her arms, and Robert, deep in thought, reluctantly lowered his eyes to out the helicopter window. The skies had darkened significantly, and a chill passed through him.

  Robert could see water below.

  Just as Shelly started to put her headphones back on, confused as to why they had come off her head in the first place, Robert’s own erupted in a burst of static.

  “Sir, we are approaching the storm I warned you about. ETA ten minutes to Seaforth, but it’s going to be a very bumpy ride from here on out. Sit tight, everyone.”

  Robert swallowed hard, and tried to bring up Leland’s face, the one he had glimpsed for just a fraction of a second before he had been transported back to the land of the living.

  Nothing came, which was only fitting, because after the story that Sean had told him, he felt completely empty.

  What do you really know about Sean Sommers?

  Chapter 24

  “We still have gun storage up here?” Ben asked as he continued to apply pressure to Smitts’s stomach. The bleeding had slowed somewhat, and the man had regained some semblance of consciousness. Not enough yet to actually speak, but the warden hoped that he would soon be able to tell him what had happened just outside the door. “Peter?”

  Ben raised his eyes.

  Peter was still sitting in his chair, his eyes locked on the monitor that showed the inmates huddled outside Cell Block E.

  “What the fuck are they doing?” he whispered just loudly enough for Ben to hear. “The door is unlocked. Why aren’t they going in?”

  “Peter! Wake the fuck up! Snap out of it!”

  Ben saw the back of the man’s head visibly shake, and then he slowly turned, his narrow features pale, his jaw slack.

  “What, Chief?”

  “Is the gun storage up here?”

  “Yeah, over there,” Peter answered, pointing his chin toward the corner of the room. Ben followed his directions, but saw nothing other than more computers and cables. It had been a while since he had been up in the Tower, he realized, as he had stayed away mostly because all of this computer shit made him uncomfortable.

  Instinctively, his hand went to the cross around his neck.

  That, on the other hand, gave him comfort. Or it had—now it just made him nervous for Father Callahan, who they couldn’t seem to find anywhere on any of the cameras.

  Did he really see Quinn, too?

  For a moment, he wished he had spent more time with Father Callahan, that he had listened to his old friend speak for longer.

  There was something going on here that was beyond his pay grade.

  And likely his skillset as well.

  “Where?”

  “Right there,” Peter replied.

  “Goddammit, Peter! Where? Get the fuck out of your chair and open it for me!”

  Peter rose from his chair with such speed that it wheeled away from him, forcing Ben had to hold his hand up so it didn’t bump into him and Smitts. The gangly man made his way quickly across the circular room and to a cabinet that at first blush looked like a computer housing. But when he scanned his keycard at the reader, it went red.

  “No access,” he said simply.

  Ben frowned.

  He was beginning to fear that Peter was losing it…or had lost it already.

  “Use mine,” Ben instructed, tossing his card to the man. It struck him in the chest and fell to the floor. Peter quickly bent and picked up. When he scanned the warden’s card, the lock disengaged and the door swung open, revealing two shotguns and two handguns. There was also a stack of rounds at the bottom of the locker and a stun gun.

  Ben breathed a sigh of relief.

  Peter had been trying to call out of the prison as soon as they’d realized that the inmates had escaped, but they had had no luck. Cell phones, VoIP, email, nothing seemed to be able to leave the island. And the thought of being up here in the Tower with the power to the doors blinking in and out and them down there, doing whatever the fuck they were doing, with no weapons other than the small pistol on his hip, was enough to make the hardened Warden Ben Tristen feel naked.

  But now, with the shotguns, they might stand a chance. They could at least hold out up here until the storm passed and help arrived. Those nutjobs could stay huddled like retarded lemmings all they wanted. With all of the other guards dead…

  He felt a pang in his stomach.

  On my watch…and Father Callahan is still out there—but he came back, he was supposed to leave, goddammit.

  Ben knew that waiting them out was the best course of action, maybe their only course of action, but he still couldn’t help feel the nagging pull of vengeance on the corners of his soul.

  They should pay for what they did to my men…to my friends. And Father…I can’t let anything happen to him.

  He glanced up at Peter, who was staring at the guns with reverence and awe. Then he turned his attention back to Smitts on the ground beneath him.

  If Quinn was here, and Smitts was still able to move…then we might have been able to take them.

  “Boss?” his friend suddenly said with a grunt. He shifted his weight, but Ben held him down.

  “Yeah? Best you lay still, Smitty. You lost a lot of blood.”

  The man shook his head.

  “…need to sit up.”

  “Smitts, sit—”

  Smitts gritted his teeth defiantly.

  “Up,” he demanded, and Ben had no choice but to allow the man to scooch onto his elbows. At the same time, he pushed Ben’s hands away from his midsection and pressed the gauze to his own wound.

  His breathing increased, but after a moment it stabilized.

  Ben was surprised that the man was even conscious, let alone speaking and sitting up. He knew Smitts was tough, but the warden was worried that this might be the man’s last hoorah.

  His final wind.

  And then it would just be him and Peter.

  “I—” He cleared his throat. “I saw Quinn.”

  Ben sprang to his feet.

  “W-w-what?” he stammered. “What do you mean you saw Quinn?”

  Smitts nodded, but then threw his head back in agony, his hands tensing on his stomach. The dark navy Seaforth Prison uniform was nearly black on Smitts’s stomach and chest.

  “I saw him,” Smitts repeated through gritted teeth. His eyes were closed now, his hard chin aimed at the ceiling. “He was holding his face, and blood was dripping from his hands. Fuck, Ben, I know this is crazy, but I saw him.”

  Ben gaped at his long-time friend. And then he said the only thing he could think of.

  Almost ashamedly, he whispered, “I saw him too.”

  Smitts didn’t see
m at all surprised by this; maybe it was the pain or the blood loss, or maybe he just knew, but Smitts barely reacted.

  Ben took a deep breath.

  “What happened to you, Smitts?” he asked, dreading the answer.

  “He…he stabbed me, Ben. Quinn fucking stabbed me.”

  Ben shook his head.

  “What the fuck is going on at Seaforth?” he asked, fighting back tears again.

  Someone answered, but it wasn’t Smitts.

  It was Peter, and when the warden raised his gaze to look at the man, his eyes went wide.

  There was a shotgun leveled at his head.

  “Carson’s setting them free, Chief. He’s setting us all free.”

  Chapter 25

  “We go in hot,” Sean shouted over the rain that pelted the helicopter. “Aiden, you take the lead. Mark, get the bird back into the air, get away from the storm, but don’t stray too far. We’re going—”

  A bolt of lightning split the pitch-black sky, and the helicopter swayed to the left. Robert felt his stomach lurch along with the tilting of the helicopter.

  “—put us down, Mark! Get us down wherever you can!”

  The helicopter dipped again, and Robert nearly fell into Shelly’s lap. She cried out, but then he managed to right himself. As they got closer to the building, a gray cement structure that, aside from a single turret, was a nearly perfect square, the structure started to shield them from the worst of the elements.

  “Sean!” Robert shouted into his mouthpiece after adjusting the headphones that had been knocked askew. “What the fuck are we supposed to do?”

  The man’s answer was immediate.

  “You and Shelly stay behind me. Even if the power is down, Aiden will find a way in. He goes first, me next, then you two. I need you to keep your eyes and ears open. If you see any inmates or quiddity, let me know.”

  Robert raised an eyebrow.

  “But what am I here for? Why do you need me? Why don’t you just send Aiden in there and blast the shit out of the place?”

  Sean shook his head.

  “It’s too late for that. Remember your dream? The rift has already started to open. I need you to close it.”

  The helicopter dipped again, and Shelly gasped. Robert reached over and tried to put his arm around her, but she pushed him away.

  “I can handle it, Rob,” she told him.

  Robert turned back to Sean, who had lifted part of the bench beside him and pulled out two dark rain jackets. For a split second before the bench slammed closed again, Robert thought he caught sight of another box inside, a smooth gray shape.

  “Put these on,” he instructed as he tossed them over. Robert caught both and handed one to Shelly.

  “Close the rift? How?” Robert yelled back as he slipped the jacket over his head. He had to pull the headphones off first, and when he did, a strong gust of wind rocked the helicopter.

  For a sickening second when the headphones flew from his hand, nearly striking Shelly before smashing against the glass, Robert was convinced that they were going to plummet to their deaths.

  And the only thing that flashed in his mind was the image of Amy.

  How could I hear her voice if she became part of the Sea? Shouldn’t she be gone by now?

  “Hold on!”

  Without his headphones, the pilot’s shouts were barely audible over the storm.

  They dipped again, and this time Shelly reached out and held him tight. Even Sean looked pale, his hands gripping the sides of his seats. During Robert’s swaying, the man had also put a rain jacket on.

  Lightning split the sky high above them again, and a second later, the copter landed with a jolt on the ground.

  Robert immediately unclicked his seatbelt and moved toward the door, but Sean shook his head.

  “Aiden first, then me, then you.”

  Robert nodded, thankful that the man with the Uzi or sub-machine gun or whatever the hell it was was going to enter the prison full of psychopaths first. As he watched the man exit the cockpit, sliding onto the ground and down to one knee like butter out of a warm pan, gun poised out in front of him, Shelly leaned over to him and whispered something in his ear.

  Startled, he nearly pitched forward, and he didn’t pick up what she said.

  “What?” he yelled over his shoulder at her. Despite being on the ground, the copter blades somehow seemed even louder here. When there was no immediate answer forthcoming, he looked at her. Shelly’s eyes were wide, and he could have sworn that there were tears in them.

  “Shel? You—”

  But the door to the copter was yanked open from the outside, and the roaring wind and rain swallowed his words. Out of his periphery, he saw Sean rise to his feet and jump out of the helicopter, just as Shelly whispered something that looked to Robert like ‘snow.’

  Snow?

  Rain pelted him on the back, and although the air was frigid, there was no snow on the horizon for another six months, probably more.

  What the hell is she talking about?

  “What?” he shouted again, but it was Sean who responded.

  “Out, Robert, we’re in the open here!”

  Robert turned back and the immediacy on Sean’s face spurred him to action.

  He made a mental note to ask Shelly what the hell she was talking about later.

  The rain struck him in the face, and he squinted hard. Although Sean was ushering him toward Aiden, who was still on one knee, gun aimed at the concrete structure that Robert could barely make out in the torrential downpour, he waited by the open door, helping Shelly out.

  This time she accepted his aid.

  And then, with one arm wrapped around her waist, they started to run.

  Behind them, Robert heard the pitch of the helicopter blades increase; he didn’t need to look back to know that it was airborne.

  In a few moments, it would be like it had never been here at all.

  Chapter 26

  “Peter? What the fuck are you doing? Peter, put the fucking gun down.”

  Peter’s face seemed to have changed from a few seconds ago. Instead of looking pale and scared, the man had a sinister smile and his eyes…there was something wrong with his eyes.

  They were dark, bordering on black. It was as if the pinprick pupils that Ben had observed upon entering the control room had grown large enough to take over the entire globes.

  “How ‘bout I blast you in the face instead, Chief?”

  The warden started to stand, but Peter took a menacing step forward, pushing the butt of the shotgun deeper into his shoulder. Ben had seen enough men do this in preparation for the expected kickback to know that he was serious.

  Swallowing hard, he raised his arthritic hands and crouched back onto his haunches.

  “Alright, alright, I’m staying here, okay? Why don’t you just tell me what the hell is going on?”

  Peter eased the pressure of the shotgun on his shoulder and Ben felt his heartrate slow a little.

  But his mind was still racing.

  What the fuck is wrong with him?

  “You want to know why Quinn went into Carson’s room?”

  Smitts craned his neck around with a groan at the mention of Quinn’s name, and Peter quickly swung the gun around to him.

  “And you sit the fuck down, Smitts, or I’ll put another hole in your body.”

  “Peter, what the fuck are you doing?”

  The man’s wild, dark eyes flicked back to the warden.

  “I’ll ask the questions here, Chief. And I asked whether you want to know what happened to your friend Quinn—if you wanted to know why he went in Carson’s cell.”

  Ben stared at the man, while at the same time scanning the room with his peripheral vision. He had no idea what had gotten into Peter, but he didn’t rightly care—at least not right now. In this moment, his goal was to subdue the man and get help for Smitts. Third was to keep the prisoners locked in the prison. This fucking computer dipshit’s motives were far dow
n his list.

  “Why’d he do it, Peter?” Ben asked.

  He couldn’t go for his gun on his hip. Although the man before him spent most of the time in front of the computer, he knew how to use a gun. Even the two part-time cooks knew how to use all of the guns inside the prison. That wasn’t to say that they had access, of course—Peter’s card being rejected at the gun cabinet was testament to that—but they knew how to use them.

  So, no, he couldn’t reach for his gun unless he wanted his face to be peppered with buckshot. The only other weapons he had on his person were the standard-issue Taser and his telescoping nightstick, neither of which would do any damage at this range.

  The only advantage he had was that there were two of them and one of him. Even incapacitated as he was, Smitts was conscious.

  The hard, dying bastard might be capable of one last, heroic act.

  “Peter? Why did Quinn go see Carson?”

  Resisting the urge to steal a glance down at his fallen comrade, he instead grimaced as if his knee was aching, and then shifted a foot or so closer to the hands at Smitts’s stomach.

  “Carson isn’t who you think he is,” Peter said calmly. “He may have once been a psychopath, especially when he was with Buddy, but not now. Now he is enlightened. Do you know what it’s like? Huh? Staring at others for so long that you lose your self? I sit up here, locked away, watching, waiting. But then…but that was before Carson. Carson saved me…he started to talk to me, he promised me that he would help find who I really am.”

  Peter paused as if to mull this over, his eyes becoming vacant. Ben wondered if this was his chance, if the man was zoned out enough that might be able to pounce…or go for his weapon…or…