Still, as they made their way down the hallway toward Cell Block E, Warden Ben Tristen kept the shotgun at the ready.
After all, there were more than two dozen mass murderers in Seaforth.
And only one priest, armed with only his wit and a strange, burning desire to speak to the worst of them all.
Chapter 36
“Cal? What in the living fuck are you doing here?”
Robert blinked twice, convinced that what he was seeing was a strange mirage. His hand still throbbed from where he had punched Sean, and for a moment he thought that perhaps the man had hit him back…and knocked him out cold, making this all a fucked-up dream. But then Cal answered, and he knew that his friend was here, in the flesh.
“I…Sean brought me here with Allan.”
Robert couldn’t believe his ears.
“What?”
Sean stepped forward and Robert was tempted to punch him again.
How the fuck could he bring Cal here? And Allan? The fucking kid with the camera?
And then he remembered what Sean had said as they had arrived at the outer gates of Seaforth.
Strange, the keycard worked before…
“A long time ago, I told you that you were selected. But I would be a fool to put all my eggs in one basket. Don’t you see, Robert? Why the fuck can’t you see?” Sean waved his arms about the hallway. “This is bigger than you, bigger than me, bigger than all of us.”
Robert glared at the man.
“Yeah, but Cal? Where the fuck have you been? What the fuck were you thinking?”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
Robert whipped around, directing his icy stare at his friend.
“What I mean is that you shouldn’t be here, Cal. And you shouldn’t have brought the kid.”
Allan moved a spectacled eye from behind the camera lens, which Robert noticed was still aimed directly at him.
You’re glowing, Robert.
“I’m eighteen,” Allan informed them, but the comment went ignored.
“Robbo, Sean asked me to help. What was I supposed to do? Besides”—he hooked a chin at Shelly—“you two were too busy fucking to care about any of this.”
“What?”
Robert took a step forward, his fists clenching. Cal didn’t back down.
“There’s someone coming,” Aiden repeated, but like Allan, no one paid attention to him either.
Cal stuck his gut out.
“You heard me.”
“You think this is a fucking game, Cal? Is that it? You pissed because Shelly picked me instead of you? So this is—what—some sort of payback?”
Cal threw his arms up.
“Not everything is about you, you narcissistic prick. This is about the fucking Marrow, Robbo. Can’t you see that? You’re standing here, getting pissed off at Sean, at this fucking dead guy here, pushing Shelly against the wall. You think it’s all about you. Sorry, bro. It ain’t.”
Robert chewed the inside of his cheek so hard that he tasted blood.
“It is about me,” he spat. “It’s about me, because my daughter. It’s about me because—” He hiked up his jean leg, revealing the three talon-shaped scars. “—because Leland touched me. And last, but not fucking least, it’s about me because Leland is my father. That, my good friend Cal, is why it’s about me right now.”
Cal was floored, and a silence fell over the room. Robert was breathing heavily, trying to regain control. Everything had happened so quickly, from the information that Sean had given him in the helicopter, to the dead guard talking about Amy, that he felt himself spiraling out of control.
A loud bang suddenly erupted from somewhere behind him, and he whipped around in time to see the door to the mess hall swing wide, and a shadowy figure running toward them.
Allan swung the camera from Robert to the figure, and the viewfinder remained dark.
“He’s alive!” Allan shouted.
Which was true, but only for another moment.
Aiden stepped up, bent on one knee, and opened fire.
The man’s chest erupted in a spray of blood, his momentum sending his limbs forward while his core was thrust backward.
Someone screamed—for all Robert knew, it was him.
The gore was too much, and he retched.
Everything was too much.
“More on their way,” Aiden said matter-of-factly. He spat some tobacco juice onto the floor. “We have to move.”
But Robert’s feet felt like they were rooted in cement. He couldn’t move. Someone’s arm rested on his back, but he was too tired, too confused, to shake it off this time. He just hoped it was Shelly and not Cal.
“Move,” Aiden repeated.
And then Robert felt it. The pressure in his chest again, like he had felt when he had ordered the dead guard to stay. He also felt time slowing.
Something was definitely happening here at Seaforth. And if his difficulty breathing was any indication, it was happening soon.
“We need to hurry,” he managed to croak, straightening himself. “We need to find Carson fast.”
Sean nodded, then turned to the dead guard.
“You know where he is?”
The man nodded.
“Still in his cell.”
“Good; take us there. Aiden, you first.” He turned to Allan next. “That camera pick up quiddity? Is that what you said?”
Allan nodded, his eyes huge and bulging behind his glasses. There was vomit on his chin and more of it clinging to his t-shirt.
“Yes, when there are quiddity onscreen, they glow a—”
“You follow Aiden, let us know if the bogies are human or dead.” He turned to Robert next. “And you, if they’re dead, do whatever the fuck you just did to Quinn. The rest of you, get behind us. Stay close, stay tight. I’ll take up the rear.”
Aiden spat again.
“Fire at will?”
Sean nodded, pulling out his pistol.
“Fire at will,” he confirmed.
They quickly regrouped, and then Aiden opened crossed the threshold into the mess hall.
Chapter 37
Father Callahan’s hands were shaking, and the sweat on his palms was threatening to cause the blade to slip out from his grip.
The pressure in his chest was immense, almost bone-crushing.
Carson laughed.
“Nervous? Why are you nervous? She isn’t even here yet.”
She?
At first, he thought Carson was referring to the girl in the prophecy, the one that would hold the rift open for the demons to spew forth. But the next sentence from the killer’s mouth banished the idea.
“Christine, why don’t you step forward?”
Father Callahan’s hand slipped off Carson’s forehead, and the man lowered his gaze.
“No…no…it can’t be…”
As the shape of the woman began to materialize in the corner of the otherwise empty room, Father Callahan let go of Carson and stumbled backward.
The woman was thin, with wiry black hair. Her flesh was pale, her eyes milky, and there were red sores on the insides of her arms: track marks.
“It can’t be,” he stammered again.
“Oh, it can be, Father—it is.”
The woman took a step forward, then another. Father Callahan, eyes bulging, matched her step for step until his back bumped up against the wooden door to the cell. And when it did, the blade fell from his hand and clattered to the floor. Any altruistic ideas of sacrificing himself, of doing anything and everything it took to prevent Carson from opening the rift, melted away.
“Say hi, Christine,” Carson instructed as he rose to his feet and finally turned to face the priest.
Christine opened her decaying mouth to say something, but the only thing that came out was a heavy burping sound. As Father Callahan watched and listened in sheer horror, the sound transitioned into something moist and bubbly. And then water spewed forth from her mouth, soaking the front of her filthy t-s
hirt.
“No!” Father Callahan screamed.
“Oh, yes. See, even people like you have demons, stuff in their past that they regret, don’t they? You remember Christine, don’t you? I mean, you thought she was possessed, am I right?” Carson laughed and Christine, mouth still spewing a geyser of foul-smelling water, continued to shamble forward.
Father Callahan turned around and fumbled with the door, trying desperately to open it.
“Yeah, you remember her. Of course you do. Tried to exorcise her demon…by, what? Waterboarding her? Wasn’t that it?” He laughed. “You sadistic bastard. She wasn’t possessed…she was addicted to drugs, Callahan. But I guess you know that now. Don’t you?”
Despite his efforts, the priest couldn’t manage to open the door. Desperate, he scratched at the wood around the lock, causing splinters to embed beneath his nails. His heart was beating so hard in his chest that he felt like his whole body was thrumming like a plucked violin string.
“It’s locked, Father,” Carson said, suddenly sounding bored.
When his fingers were reduced to a bloody, raw mess, Father Callahan gave up and turned around. Christine was within three feet of him now. Unable to deal with the sight of her, he slid to the hard floor. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of the blade, which was just within reach. As Christine stepped forward, water still pouring from her mouth, Callahan stretched and grabbed the blade. The horrible fluid splashed down on his head, soaking him.
He gagged; the water, if that was what it was, was foul and thicker than he first thought. Father Callahan turned his eyes upward, but had to quickly look away as the water cascaded down over his face.
“Tsk, tsk, Father. You should know better—that blade won’t do anything to Christine…she’s already dead.”
Father Callahan retched, and then moved his head to one side, out of the direct flow of infinite water from Christine’s maw.
“It’s not for her,” he wheezed. And then he brought the blade up to his own neck. “It’s for me!”
The smile suddenly fell off Carson’s face.
“No!” he screamed at the top of his lungs. “Christine! Stop him!”
Chapter 38
“This way, quickly!” the guard said, waving them through the open doorway.
Aiden went first, followed by Sean, then Robert, then the others.
It was the third doorway that they had been through in the last several minutes, and Robert was beginning to think that they were going in circles.
“How much further?” he asked quietly.
The guard shook his head.
“Not far, but like I said, we have to go through the mess hall and then deal with the inmates. They are guarding Carson. I don’t know what he promised them, but they are…they are…”
Aiden suddenly held up his fist as they came up to another door.
“Mess hall,” the guard confirmed.
Aiden nodded.
“Uhh, guys?” a small voice asked.
Aiden looked over at Sean, and glanced down at his gun. Sean raised the pistol and nodded back.
“Guys?”
“I’ll take right, you left. Shoot on sight.”
“Guys!”
Robert finally turned and found himself staring into Allan’s pale face.
“What?”
“You should—you should see this.”
Robert didn’t move. Cal did the honors and flipped the viewfinder of the kid’s camera around, the aperture of which was still pointed directly at the door.
Robert’s heart immediately sunk.
“Jesus,” he whispered. “Can it be a mistake?”
Allan shook his head slowly.
“How many?” Sean asked in his usual monotone voice.
“I—I—”
“Allan! How many are there?”
“I don’t know! Too many, can’t even see the separation.”
The viewfinder was awash in red and yellow light. It was as if the entire mess hall was glowing.
Aiden looked to Sean for advice, then to Robert.
“Plan?” he said simply.
Sean turned to Robert.
“Can you do that thing again? Make them stop? Stand still?”
Robert shrugged.
“Fuck if I know. I don’t even know what I did.”
Sean stared at him for a good five seconds before turning to the guard.
“Any other way to Cell Block E? To Carson?”
The man shook his head, who Robert still couldn’t stare at directly given the fact that his eyes had been torn from his head.
“Through the mess hall is the only way.”
Sean chewed his lip, uncertain for one of only a few times since Robert had met the man. But whatever he decided, Robert hoped that he would hurry. The pressure in his chest was building again, and time had once again acquired the strange, liquid-like quality that Robert was becoming all too familiar with.
“We have to move,” he instructed the group. “I’ll go first.”
Shelly grabbed the back of his arm, and when he turned to face her, he realized that there were tears in her eyes.
“Rob, you can’t.”
Robert looked to Cal next, who couldn’t quite meet his gaze. He felt horrible for the way he had treated his friends—his only friends in this world.
He nodded, standing up tall.
“I can, and I will. Like you said”—he looked at Cal—“it isn’t all about me.”
The guard spoke next.
“I’ll go with,” he said.
Robert turned back to the door before either Cal or Shelly could protest.
Sean was staring at him, and judging by the pained expression his face, the man was also feeling the pressure in his chest.
“You two go in, then me and Aiden, in case there are inmates in there, too.” The man turned to the other members of their crew and stared at them for a moment. Even though he said nothing, Robert knew what he was thinking. Sean was debating whether or not to order them to stay here—if that would be safer. “You guys stay close,” the man decided at last.
Then he whipped around to face the door, moving off to one side to allow Robert to pass.
Robert took another deep breath with his eyes closed. He could feel the pressure building, and knew inside that he could do what he had done to the guard again, no matter how many ghosts there were inside.
After all, he wasn’t just a Guardian, but he was Leland’s son.
And Amy’s father.
Robert exhaled and shoved the door to the mess hall wide.
Chapter 39
Realizing he had been duped, that Carson and Leland had lured him here, that they needed him to open the gate, there was only one decision that he could make. There was only one way to stop them.
But Father Callahan was old and slow.
Too slow.
Christine reached down and grabbed his arm a split second before he plunged the blade into his neck. And then everything started to go black.
The priest felt his body tense, as if every muscle in his body had seized all at once. And then, as the fluid finally stopped pouring out of Christine’s mouth, he found himself staring into her eyes, unable to move, unable to breathe.
Her eyes started to go dark, the whites disappearing into a solid black. But as he watched, he realized that there were flecks of white in those eyes, flecks that soon started to grow and grow, until he they weren’t just flecks, but a froth of some sort.
The Marrow, he thought. The word brought with it a calmness that started to flow over and through him all at once.
But then he heard a voice.
“Oh no you don’t. Not yet, Father.”
Someone gripped his other arm, and the feeling that was previously contained inside him now poured out and into Carson.
The naked murderer moaned, and his whole body shuddered.
“Yes, yes…the rift shall be opened,” he called out, his voice bordering on ecstasy.
Christine was on his right, while Carson was on his left, both seated, both holding one of his hands in their laps.
Carson had a sinister grin on his face, and in that instant Father Callahan knew that he had failed. Worse, he had given Carson what he needed to open the rift; he was the keeper of the book, and now, holding Carson’s living hand, and Christine’s dead hand, he was trapped between worlds.
And because of this, he would act as a conduit for the dead.
He was the rift.
How could I be so foolish? How could I be so stupid?
Father Callahan closed his eyes.
You did the right thing, Father. This is for the best.
His eyes snapped open.
The thought was in his head, but it wasn’t his own. But it was one that he recognized.
It was from a man that he and Sean had chased for nearly a decade, a man that they had stolen two sons from.
Thank you, Father Callahan. Thank you.
“I—” Father Callahan croaked, but his head was suddenly thrown back, and his mouth was thrust open. “Noooooo!”
Light shot from his eyes and open mouth, turning his entire world white.
“Yes, yes, it’s opening,” he heard someone say, although he couldn’t tell if the words were in his head, or if it was Carson or Christine speaking. “It’s opening!”
The pressure in the priest’s chest suddenly eased, and he felt a moment of odd relaxation. It was as if his body had melted and he was finally unburdened of his aches and pains. His robes tore, and out of his bare chest came a massive beam of light that shot to the ceiling, where it puddled and frothed on the cement like the flames in the Marrow that he had read about but had never seen for himself.
And then his ribcage separated and pulled apart. He tried to scream, but only more light, brighter light, came out of his mouth.
The floor beneath his body fell away, revealing a roiling sea crashing on caramel shores.
And fire, there was fire there, too.
There was fire everywhere.
Seaforth Prison (The Haunted Book 3) Page 14
